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AMERICAN CRISIS BIOGRAPHIES 

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AMERICAN CRISIS BIOGRAPHIES 



John C. Calhoun 



by 
GAILLARD HUNT 

Author of " Life of James Madison," etc. 




PHILADELPHIA 

GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



£""54-0 



'UttKARY ot CONuKfrSS 1 
lv«u OOBies lit*. 

AUG .24 laOb 



Jl; ,yll«ii' 






W7 

Copyright, 1907, by 
George W. Jacobs & Company 
Published August, 1908 



PREFACE 

In this book I endeavor to show not only the 
chief events in the political career of John C. Cal- 
houn, but his complete identification with two op- 
posing popular movements : — how he helped to form 
a broad national sentiment, the part he played in 
the struggle in his state against that sentiment, and 
his leadership of the triumphant sectional senti- 
ment. I have shown that, as he was a popular 
leader, he was dominated by popular forces and 
that his power lay in his correct interpretation of 
the will of his people. To study his public life, 
therefore, is to study the course of public opinion 
in the South during a momentous period, when it 
formed into a great movement to resist a greater 
movement. 

I have sketched his personal characteristics and 
his private life, which was beautiful in its simplicity 
and purity, and have aimed to show that his per- 
sonal ambition was always subordinated to the 
cause with which he was identified. It is fortunate 
for the credit of our history that the leadership fell 
to such as he. If he had been a man of less lofty 
character and of less unselfish ambition ; if he had 
tried to turn the great power which the people gave 
him to his own advantage, he would have made a 



6 PEEFACE 

record of shame of what is now a record of honor. 
He dignified every question that he embraced, and 
it is largely due to him that the struggle which 
reached its final crisis soon after his death has at 
length come to be treated by dispassionate historians 
as the effort of honest men impelled by honest 
motives. 



I 



CONTENTS 





Chronology 


9 


I. 


A Good Training . 


11 


II. 


The Leadership of the Young 






Men 


21 


III. 


"A Most Captivating Man ' 


34 


IV. 


The Secretary of War 


13 


V. 


A Looker-on 


57 


VI. 


Sources of the Calhoun Doc 






trine 


75 


VII. 


The Calhoun Doctrine 


94 


VIII. 


Calhoun's Opponents . 


108 


IX. 


South Carolina in 1830 


121 


X. 


[Refinements of Creeds 


133 


XI. 


The Ordinance . 


119 


XII. 


A Man With a Mission 


170 


XIII. 


Victory Too Complete . 


188 


XIV. 


Curbing Andrew Jackson . 


198 


XV. 


Likes and Dislikes 


. 210 


XVI. 


Calhoun's Autobiography . 


. 239 


XVII. 


Secretary of State 


. 258 


XVIII. 


Peace and War 


. 274 


XIX. 


The Inspired Leader . 


290 


XX. 


The Dead Senator 


. 309 




Bibliography 


. 322 




Index 


325 



CHRONOLOGY 

1770 — Patrick Calhoun and Martha Caldwell married. 

178'2— Birth of John Caldwell Calhoun, on September 12th, at 
Calhoun Creek, near Little River, Abbeville District, 
S. C. 

1802— Enters Yale College in the Junior class. 

1804— Graduates from Yale on September 12th. 

1805 — Enters the law-sohool of Gould and Reeve at Litchfield, 
Conn., remaining about eighteen months. 

1807 — Admitted to the bar and practices law at Abbeville. 
Elected to the state legislature on October 13th, and 
serves for two years. 

1810 — Elected a member of the national House of Representa- 
tives in October. 

1811 — Married on January 8th in St. John's Parish to Floride, 
only daughter of John Ewing Colhoun (or Calhoun). 
Returns to bis plantation, '" Bath," in the Abbeville Dis- 
trict. Attends Congress on November 4th and makes 
his first speech on December 12th. He remains a mem- 
ber of the House till 1817. 

1812— Offers declaration of war against Great Britain on 
June 3d. 

1817— Assumes office as Secretary of War under James Monroe 
on March 3d and serves till October 8, 1825. 

1819— Makes report on roads and canals on January 14th. 

1822— Put in nomination for the presidency in Pennsylvania, 
and is a candidate continuously for twenty-eight years, 
until his death. 

1824— Makes second report on roads and canals on Decem- 
ber 3d. Elected Vice-President of the United States. 

1825— Assumes office of Vice-President on March 4th, and 
serves for seven years. Moves to his permanent abode 
at Fort Hill. 



10 CHEONOLOGY 

1828 — Writes the South Carolina Exposition, which the legis- 
lature orders to be printed. Reelected to be Vice- 
President. 

1830— Jackson accuses him of treachery. He replies on May 20th. 

1831 — Publishes Seminole correspondence in February. On 
July 26th writes Address to the People of South Carolina. 

1832— Resigns the vice-presidency on July 16th. South Caro- 
lina passes the ordinance of nullification on November 
24th. On Deoember 12th is elected to the Senate. 

1833 — Takes the oath as senator on January 4th. On March 7th 
the compromise tariff bill is signed. Ou March 11th 
South Carolina Convention meets to repeal ordinance of 
nullification. Calhoun now remains in the Senate for 
ten years. 

1843 — Withdraws to private life and enters upon active cam- 
paign for the presidential nomination. Writes part of 
his Disquisition on Government and Discourse on the Con- 
stitution of the United States. 

1844— Withdraws from presidential contest on January 20th. 
In March accepts office as Secretary of State under John 
Tyler. 

1845— Elected a senator on November 26th and continues in 
the Senate until his death. 

1846 — Assumes leadership of the Senate on the Oregon question. 

1849— Brings his Disquisition on Government to completion and 
nearly finishes his Discourse on the Constitution of the 
United States. 

1850— On March 4th his last great speech is read in the Senate 
by Mason. On March 13th he delivers his last remarks. 
Dies in Washington on March 31st. 



JOHN C. CALHOUN 



CHAPTER I 

A GOOD TRAINING 



John Caldwell Calhoun was born on March 
18, 1782, in a comfortable frame house on Calhoun 
Creek, near Little Eiver, Abbeville district, South 
Carolina. This house was destroyed by fire about 
ten years ago, but the place where it stood is still 
well defined. In 1782 it was the only frame house 
in that region, the others being built of logs ; aud 
Calhoun's father, Patrick Calhoun, was the chief 
man in a small colony of pioneers. 

Patrick Calhoun was a Scotchman of the High- 
land Clan of Colquhoun, but his family had left 
Scotland for the north of Ireland early in the 
eighteenth century, and he was born in Donegal. 
Partly because of the failure of crops in Ireland, 
and partly for religious reasons, his father and 
mother, James and Catherine, with their four sous, 
emigrated to America in 1733, landiug at New 
York. They settled near the Potomac River in the 
western part of Pennsylvania; but the country 



12 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

being unsafe from the French and English war, then 
raging, they moved on to what is now Wythe 
County in Virginia, later, in 1755, following the 
Alleghanies to Waxhaw, S. C, and the next year 
to Little River. James Calhoun died before they 
moved to Virginia, and ia 1760 the old Scotch 
mother, Catherine Calhoun, was killed by the In- 
dians. Patrick married Martha Caldwell in 1770. 
She was born in Charlotte County, Virginia, but 
her family, like the Calhouns, were emigrants from 
the north of Ireland, where they had gone from 
Scotland, being, however, Lowlanders. Her brother, 
John Caldwell, was killed by Tories the year before 
the birth of her third son, whom she called after 
him. On both sides, therefore, he was of Scotch 
Presbyterian descent, and came of a race, self- 
opinionated, unbending and severe, fond of examin- 
ing into the causes of things, resolute, and con- 
spicuously without gayety or sense of humor. He 
was by descent a pure Scotchman, and his early as- 
sociations were with the generation of pioneers who 
cleared the ground for their homes, built them with 
their own hands, and defended them with their 

lives. 
* Patrick Calhoun had had little schooling, and his 
son's education was remarkable in that, so far as 
teachers imparted it, it was acquired in seven years. 
He had arrived almost at man's estate and his 
nature and character were already formed before he 
went to school at all. The Eev. Moses Waddell, 
a Presbyterian minister, whose first wife was Cal- 



A GOOD TRAINING 13 

houn's elder sister, lived in Columbia County, 
Georgia, for a few years, and at the age of thirteen 
Calhoun spent a year in his family. The clergyman 
managed a circulating library, and the boy read so 
much that his health became impaired. In conse- 
quence, he was brought home and put to the plow, 
read few books, and led an active farmer's life till 
he was nineteen. It was then determined by his 
family that his talents were such that he deserved 
an education, and they supposed that a year or two 
at school would prepare him for the study of law 
and admission to the bar. This did not please him, 
however. He was, he said, satisfied to continue a 
farmer's life, but if he was to be given an educa- 
tion, he must have the best the country afforded, 
and to complete it would require seven years. The 
necessary funds for the purpose being procured, he 
put himself under Dr. Waddell, who had now set- 
tled at Wellington on the Carolina side of the Sa- 
vannah River near the Georgia border, about eight 
miles from the Calhouns, where he kept what was 
probably the most famous, as it was certainly the 
most unique, school in the South. 

The boys lived in log huts in the woods and fur- 
nished their own supplies, or boarded at farm- 
houses in the vicinity of the school, which was also 
built of logs. At sunrise every morning Dr. Wad- 
dell would come out on his porch and wind a horn, 
which was answered by horns from the houses of 
the boys, and they would then go to the main build- 
ing for prayers. These being over, each boy would 



14 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

take a chair marked with his name, and go off to 
the woods where they studied in groups. If the 
weather was cold, fires were lighted, about which 
they gathered. George McDuftie, Hugh S. Legare, 
and James Louis Petigru were among the many emi- 
nent Carolinians who were educated at this strange 
institution, and all were agreed in an opinion which 
Calhoun expressed in later lite, that, as a teacher, 
Dr. Waddell was almost unrivaled ; that he suc- 
ceeded in exciting emulation among his scholars, 
and was the father of classical education in the 
upper country of South Carolina and Georgia. Al- 
though Calhoun had never studied Latin till he 
went to Waddell' s school, he was able, after two 
years at Wellington, when he was twenty-one years 
old, to enter the junior class of Yale College. This 
institution was his own choice, and in making it, he 
followed the example set him by the wealthier 
young men of his state, who generally finished their 
education at Northern colleges or abroad. 

Thomas Jefferson was President of the United 
States when Calhoun, also a Republican, entered 
Yale, a hotbed of Federalism. In conjunction with 
the clergy, this institution led public opinion in 
Connecticut, and taught the people to believe that 
Jefferson was a monster of wickedness, and that to 
return the Federalists to power was necessary for 
the salvation of the country. So the backwoods 
Carolinian, who had never before been in the North, 
and who had been only two years at school, was 
really more in touch with the trend of his time than 



A GOOD TRAINING 15 

were the more cultured people of New Haveu. 
There is a traditiou that Timothy Dwight, the 
president of Yale, once engaged him in political 
debate in the class-room, and afterward spoke in 
high terms of his talents — a notable concession on 
his part, for he hated Republicans above all things. 
So far as Yale life went, Calhoun in the two years 
of his attendance at the college can hardly be said 
to have been absorbed by it, or to have absorbed it. 
He graduated on September 12, 1804, but on ac- 
count of illness took no part in the commencement 
exercises, where he was to have read an essay on 
"The Qualifications Necessary to Constitute a Per- 
fect Statesman." 

To complete his education he next attended a 
law-school at Litchfield, Conn., kept by Judge 
James Gould and Tapping Reeve. It enjoyed a 
high reputation ; and it is to be hoped that Mr. 
Reeve, at any rate, was a better teacher than he was 
a patriot, for a few months before Calhoun became 
his pupil, he wrote, on February 7, 1801, to Uriah 
Tracy, a Uuited States senator from Connecticut, 
that he and all of his friends believed the time 
had come for New England to separate from the 
Union. 1 Calhoun lived at Litchfield for a year, 
but probably felt here, as he had in New Haven, 
that he was an alien. His most intimate associate 
was a fellow student, also from South Carolina, 
John M. Felder, who had been his classmate and 
chum at Yale, and was then and throughout his life 

Lodge's Cabot, p. 442. 



16 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

a Republican of the old school, who looked to that 
party to save the nation, and who finally refused to 
follow his friend into the nullification movement, 
because he thought it would destroy the Union. 

Calhoun returned to South Carolina, read law, 
and was admitted to the bar at Abbeville by 
the Supreme Court in the year 1807. For the study 
of the law he expressed an aversion ; nor did he like 
the practice of the profession, although he succeeded 
from the start. He wished to acquire by means of 
it an independence and then return to a planter's 
life, declaring with perfect truth that he was not 
ambitious to be rich. The absence of this ambition 
was common with Southern men of his class. 
Whatever they were, they were not sordid. Their 
farms generally yielded full sustenance for the house- 
hold. Habitually they did not ueed much money, 
and if the income was not sufficient for extraordi- 
nary expenses, they were met by borrowing. As is 
usual in agricultural communities, many were in 
debt ; but Calhoun was taught in a strict school by 
a Scotch mother and managed his finances carefully. 

The books read by a bright boy have an influence 
in moulding his mind, which is manifested through 
life, and it is, therefore, interesting to know that 
when Calhoun at thirteen was with Dr. Waddell, 
his favorite books were Rollin's Ancient History, 
Robertson's History of America and of Charles V, 
Voltaire's Charles XII and Locke's Essay on the 
Human Understanding. This was a vigorous and 
comprehensive course. From Rollin he learned 



A GOOD TRAINING 17 

about the chief empires of the ancient world ; from 
Robertson and Voltaire he obtained an insight into 
European history in the sixteenth and eighteenth 
centuries, and also from Robertson a knowledge of 
early American history ; while Locke taught him 
an elaborate method of analysis and superfine rea- 
soning which he himself afterward applied to the 
Constitution of the United States. 

Calhoun was thirteen years of age when his father 
died. This father was a leader in his community, 
a county j udge and a member of the state legisla- 
ture. He was a Whig during the Revolution, and 
afterward opposed the adoption of the Constitution 
of the United States. One of his son's earliest 
recollections was, when nine years of age, hearing 
him argue in favor of a government which should 
allow the largest amount of personal freedom com- 
patible with social order. He was a democrat, and 
in common with many men of the day, feared that 
the power conferred upon government by the new 
Constitution would prove fatal to liberty in America. 
The son was too young to receive a lasting impress 
from the father, but he naturally inherited the 
father's political views. 

It was under the mother's direction that the boy 
learned to manage the plantation. She was thrifty 
and competent, and the high character and inflexible 
nature of the son were inheritances from her. She 
was an old woman when he left home to go to school 
and died before he completed his course at Yale. 

When Calhoun was about eighteen years of age, 



18 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

there entered into his life a peculiarly tender and 
softening influence in the friendship which he 
formed with Floride Bonneau Colhoun, the widow 
of his first cousin, John Ewing Colhoun, 1 who rep- 
resented South Carolina in the United States Senate 
for a year, from 1801 until his death in 1802. She was 
of a French Huguenot family, a woman of wealth 
and of a generation before Calhoun's. There was a 
strong attachment between them. She regarded 
him almost as a son ; he felt for her veneration, re- 
spect and warm affection, and when a young man 
confided in her as he did in no other person. 
Floride Bonneau, in turn, put such trust in him 
that she wished him to marry her only daughter, 
Floride, and when the young man fell in love with 
her, he communicated his wishes and hopes to the 
mother froni whom he received assistance in his suit. 
The natural result followed, and they were married 
on January 8, 1811. The girl had grow i into 
womanhood with him before her ; and no other 
love of his has been recorded. So at the age of 
twenty-nine his domestic life was settled. 

His marriage brought him an addition to his in- 
come, but he had already abandoned the practice of 
law, and now settled on a plantation, which he 
called "Bath," in the Abbeville district. In 1807, 
two years before he was admitted to the bar, he was 

1 An effort was made to get Senator Colhoun to restore the 
spelling of the name to Colquhoun, and he compromised by 
changing it from Calhoun to Colhoun ; but his widow was com- 
monly called Calhoun. 



A GOOD TRAINING 19 

elected a member of the state legislature. He was 
following what lie conceived to be the line of duty 
of every man of education with sufficient leisure ; 
that of offering himself for the public service. 

After three years of distinguished connection with 
this body, Calhoun was elected to the national 
House of Representatives as a Republican, and took 
his seat in November, 1811. 

We see the young man just entering upon his ex- 
traordinary career. He is six feet two inches tall, 
with bushy brown hair which he parts on the side 
and which falls over his high forehead. Blue or 
gray eyes of startling brilliancy are set deep in their 
sockets and shadowed by heavy brown eyebrows. 
His features are regular, his face thin, and his ex- 
pression serious but kindly. His figure is gaunt 
and erect ; he is clad soberly and plainly and he is 
evidently a countryman. He has absolutely no per- 
sonal vanity, and his manners are simple, gentle and 
sympathetic. He takes life seriously and his nature 
is serious. He has little sense of humor and has 
never written a line of poetry, ' nor read much of it ; 
he has cultivated none of the graces of life. He has 
scattered no wild oats, and has needed the forgive- 
ness of neither man nor woman. He has seen noth- 
ing of the world, and has entered into no life beyond 
that of his native state. He has traveled to and 
from Connecticut, has seen the sea at Newport 

1 The statement stands, notwithstanding the fact that some 
youthful verses of his have been found, each stanza of which be- 
gins with the word " whereas." 



20 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

where Floride Bonneau had a house, and has visited 
New York ; but he has lived uowhere but in Caro- 
lina. The young man's life has been narrow, but 
he has a moral character that is inflexible and a 
perfect faith in himself. He is resolute, fearless, 
self-reliant and strong, and wheresoever he may di- 
rect his steps, there will he go, nor will obstacles in 
his path stop him or turn him. He appears upon 
the national stage at the time of a crisis, prepared 
to act a statesman's part. 



CHAPTER II 

THE LEADERSHIP OF THE YOUNG MEN 

Never had the condition of the country been 
more alarming than it was when Calhoun entered 
the House of Representatives. War was really im- 
pending, yet neither Congress nor the Executive 
was preparing for it, and the people did not realize 
its imminence. Disunited, the country had blun- 
dered on, without definite purpose and without 
leaders. The President wished to avoid a conflict 
so long as he could. It was, in fact, his duty to ex- 
haust every peaceful resource ; but having done so 
he was not the proper man to call a nation to arms, 
for feeling no martial ardor he could inspire none. 
For some years Congress had been an inefficient 
body — an aggregation of conflicting factions, with 
the strongest men numbered among the disaffected 
Federalists, who, the British government believed, 
sided with it in its dispute with the United States. 
It could not believe otherwise when the British en- 
voy reported that two prominent Federalist senators 
had urged him to stand firm against the American 
government. 

The Twelfth Congress met on November 4, 1811, 
a month before the usual time, and public interest 
centred in the House, which then offered a greater 



22 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

field for activity than the Senate. Henry Clay had, 
in fact, declined returning to the Senate, in order 
that he might take the leadership in the other 
branch of Congress, where he was elected Speaker. 
He was only thirty-four years of age, and he ap- 
pointed to be the second member of the Committee 
on Ways and Means, Laugdxm Cheves, of South 
Carolina, who was his senior by only a year, while 
Willia m Lown des, also of South Carolina, but 
fwenty-nine years old, was made the second mem- 
ber of the Committee on Manufactures and chair- 
man of the Committee on Naval Affairs. Calhoun 
occupied the second place on the Committee on For- 
eign Eelations ; but the following spring, the chair- 
man, General Peter B. Porter, of New York, having 
retired from Congress, he succeeded to the post. 
Cheves became chairman of the Committee on Ways 
and Means in 1813, and in 1814, when Henry Clay 
went on his mission abroad, was made Speaker of 
the House. In 1812 the predominance of South 
Carolina in Congress was an embarrassment to the 
Speaker in making up the committees, and Calhoun, 
being the junior member of the delegation, expressed 
a willingness to retire from the chairmanship of the 
Foreign Relations Committee, so that Cheves and 
Lowndes could have the chairmanships to which 
they were entitled. John Smilie, of Pennsylvania, 
an old member, was accordingly made chairman, 
but at the first meeting of the committee, he resigned 
and Calhoun became his successor. If to the names 
of Calhoun, Cheves and Lowndes are added those of 



LEADERSHIP OF THE YOUNG MEN 23 

Clay and Felix Grujadx o£^ennessee, the list of the 
great leaders of the House, who shaped the course 
of legislation immediately before, during, and after 
the War of 1812, is complete. In the Senate John 
Gaillard, of South Carolina, was the President pro 
tempore, and the Vice-President, El bridge Gerry, 
dying on November 23, 1814, Senator Gaillard, for 
nearly three years, was first in the line of succession 
to the presidency of the United States. No state 
then wielded so great a power in the nation as 
South Carolina. When Henry Clay was an old 
man, he gave it as his opinion that in no Congress 
in all the years of his public service was there 
u such a galaxy of eminent and able men as were in 
the House of Representatives of that Congress which 
declared the war, and in that immediately following 
the peace." 

On December 11, 1811, after a service of little 
more than a month, Calhoun made his first long 
speech in the House on the report of the Committee 
on Foreign Relations, which precipitated the con- 
flict with Great Britain. It was a young man's 
speech — an impetuous call to arms and a fervid ap- 
peal to the country to fight and not count the pe- 
cuniary cost of war against the loss of honor. 

He was classed at this time as a supporter of the 
administration, but he did not accept the embargo 
and non-intercourse policy, and voted for the last 
embargo, immediately before the declaration of hos- 
tilities, simply because he considered it a war meas- 
ure. On April 4, 1814, he introduced the bill to re- 



24 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

peal the embargo and non-intercourse acts. Re- 
strictive measures, he contended, were uot suited to 
the activity of the people, aud rendered the govern- 
ment unpopular. They antagonized the merchants 
and demoralized them by giving encouragement to 
smuggling. He favored a more robust policy. 
"The nation," he maintained, "ought to be 
taught to rely on its own courage, its fortitude, its 
skill and virtue for protection." His objections to 
the policy were "of a general and national charac- 
ter." " It sinks the nation in its own estimation," 
he said ; "it counts for nothing what is ultimately 
connected with our best hopes — the union of these 
states. Our Union cannot stand on the cold calcu- 
lation of interest alone. ' ' 

He approached every subject that came before the 
House from the standpoint of broad nationalism. In 
his first speech he said : " I am not here to represent 
my own state alone. I renounce the idea, and I 
will show, by my vote, that I contend for the in- 
terests of the whole people of this community." 

The leadership of the young men was experi- 
mental at first, and it was uncertain how the people 
would greet it ; but after continuing for six months, 
it became apparent that it had popular support. 

It had been doubtful, too, what would be the 
course of the House upon the great issue, but the 
young leaders, with the encouragement of the ad- 
ministration, had succeeded in securing a majority, 
and a deputation of members, with Clay at their 
head, waited upon the President and represented to 



LEADERSHIP OF THE YOUNG MEN 25 

him that they were now ready to vote for war, if he 
would recommend it. This was all Madison had 
been waiting for, and on June 1st he sent the war 
message to Congress. At the close of the sitting, it 
was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations 
of which Calhoun was then the head, because of 
the temporary absence of the chairman ; and on the 
morning of June 3d he brought in the famous report, 
recommending a declaration of war, which was the 
strongest presentation of the case against Great 
Britain ever written. Because of its great length 
and the evident elaborate care in the preparation, 
it is improbable that the report was composed in 
the brief period of less than two days which elapsed 
after the reception of the President's message. It 
had, in fact, been prepared when the message was 
prepared, or before, and by the hand of the Secretary 
of State, James Monroe. Both the message and the 
report emanated from the same source, the admin- 
istration of James Madison." 

The report pleased Calhoun as well as if he had 

'This report has commonly been attributed to Calhoun, but 
erroneously ; nor has the fact that Monroe wrote it ever been 
made known before. It is derived from an extract from an 
unpublished article by Joseph Gales sent on January 12, 1854, 
by William M. Moore, of the KuHonal Intelligencer, to Richard K. 
Cralle. Oales's testimony is based upon his personal knowledge. 
He says that he saw the report and that it was in the handwrit- 
ing of Monroe's private secretary. The account of Clay's visit 
to Madison follows Galea's MS. This was the famous visit when, 
according to certain false accounts, Clay offered Madison a re- 
nomination for the presidency in rxchange for a war message. 
As a matter of fact, the administration was waiting for Congress, 
instead of Congress prodding the administration. 



26 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

written it himself and lie sustained it with all his 
strength. His speech a year later, June 16, 1813, 
supporting the war was the strongest defense it ever 
received. For the Federalists who opposed it, he 
expressed unmeasured contempt. They were, he 
said, on January 15, 1814, a factious and dangerous 
opposition. What measures were they urging? he 
asked. "Withhold the laws; withhold the loans ; 
withhold the meu who are to fight our battles, or, 
in other words, to destroy public faith ; and deliver 
the country unarmed to the mercy of the enemy." 
He disclaimed any inclination to defend the conduct 
of France, but of those who sent memorials de- 
nouncing her, he said, on February 2, 1811, if 
they merely intended to express their aversion to 
French tyranny, he would agree with them ; and so, 
he believed, would a great majority of the American 
people. It was not to this point of view he was 
disposed to object, but it was that, in abusing the 
French Emperor, they wished to justify the opposite 
despot over the Channel ; and he made the grave 
charge that some Federalists in Congress seemed to 
exult at American military disasters. 

Notwithstanding his contempt for the Federalist 
party, Calhoun acted with it when he thought it in 
the right ; and he, Lowndes and Cheves, against the 
advice of Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, 
voted for the bill remitting duties on goods im- 
ported before the declaration of war and held in 
bond. They also acted with the Federalists in ob- 
taining an increase of the navy, although Republic 



LEADERSHIP OF THE YOUNG MEN 27 

ans generally followed Jefferson in treating that 
arm of the service with reprehensible neglect. 

Calhoun was in favor of a national bank. For 
this purpose, he said, on November 21, 1814, he 
had regarded the nation as a nation, and not as di- 
vided into political parties ; but he would not agree 
to the administration's bill offered in the session of 
1814-1815, because its only object was to render 
assistance to the government through its borrowing- 
capacity, and he still less approved Daniel Webster's 
substitute bill which eliminated this feature and 
made the proposed bank useless for any public pur- 
pose. The next administration bill, which he also 
opposed as unsatisfactory, failed because of the 
arrival of the treaty of peace ; and in the Congress 
of 1816 he was made chairman of the Committee of 
the Currency, because, in debate, he had shown a 
notable grasp of financial subjects. He now intro- 
duced and carried through a bank bill of his own, 
the main purpose of which was to systematize the 
disordered currency. It became a law on April 10, 
1816, and created a federal bank of great power, 
having a charter modeled upon that drawn up by 
Alexander Hamilton for the first bank of the United 
States. On March 20, 1816, he introduced another 
bill, "to regulate the currency within the United 
States of the gold coins of Great Britain, Portugal, 
France, and Spain and the five- franc pieces of 
Napoleon," and on April 13th, a resolution " that 
it is inexpedient at the present time to make the 
prohibition of the exportation of bullion and specie. " 



28 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

In fact, at this time he devoted more study to the 
subject of national finances than to any other sub- 
ject. 

In the progress of the war its strongest champion 
in the House was Calhoun. He stood for every 
measure looking to its vigorous prosecution, and 
even after the Treaty of Ghent arrived, advised 
caution in reducing the military establishment. 
He approved of the articles of the treaty, insisting 
that in failing to make provision against impress- 
ment, the question had not been abandoned, as we 
had shown such power in the war that no nation 
would ever again impress American sailors into its 
service. "I feel pleasure and pride," he said in a 
speech, on January 24, 1815, "in being able to 
say that I am of a party which drew the sword on 
this question and succeeded in the contest, for, to 
all practical purposes, we have achieved complete 
success." 

He accepted willingly all the obligations which 
the war imposed upon the government, including 
that of protecting from destructive foreign competi- 
tion the manufacturing industries called into being 
by the restrictive policy. He hoped, he said, " to 
see manufactures encouraged by appropriate duties, 
and had no idea of their being left without such pro- 
tection." The next day he repeated that "the 
great requisite to the due encouragement of manu- 
factures" now was, that "certain manufactures in 
cotton and woolens, which have kindly taken root in 
our soil, should have a moderate but permanent 



LEADEKSHIP OF THE YOUNG MEN 29 

protection insured to them." His views were sub- 
stantially those put forth by Dallas, Secretary of the 
Treasury, in his report to Congress in 1816 ;— that 
manufactures recently or partially established 
should be fostered by protective duties, and those 
firmly and permanently established should be pro- 
tected from ruinous foreign competition. The tariff 
of 1816, brought in by Lowndes, as chairman of the 
Committee on Ways and Means, met with Calhoun's 
full approval, and he even suggested that a duty be 
laid on sugar high enough to encourage its produc- 
tion in this country. When the duty on cottons 
was under consideration, he said that he favored a 
permanent tax of twenty per cent. He believed 
"the policy of the country required protection of 
our manufacturing establishments," and in seeking 
a reason, he regarded "the fact that it would make 
the parts adhere more closely ; that it would form 
a new and most powerful cement, far outweighing 
any political objections that might be urged against 
the system." In his opinion the liberty and the 
union of the country were inseparably united. 
"That as the destruction of the latter would most 
certainly involve the former, so its maintenance 
will with equal certainty preserve it." 

It was for the same broad reason that he favored 
the construction by the general government of a 
system of roads and canals throughout the states. 
In his first message to Congress after the war, Mad- 
ison recommended the consideration of the subject, 
and suggested that, if the Constitution did not con- 



30 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

fer the necessary power, the propriety of amending 
it should be discussed. In December, 1816, Cal- 
houn introduced a bill, setting aside the government 
profits in the national bank, as a fund to be applied 
to internal improvements. More roads and canals, 
he thought, would make the wealth of the country 
more uniform and render the people more united, 
which was the greatest end of all. Constitutional 
objections he brushed aside. He was, he said, " no 
advocate for refined arguments on the Constitution. 
The instrument is not intended as a thesis for the 
logician to exercise his ingenuity on. It ought to 
be construed with plain, good sense ; and what can 
be more express than the Constitution on this 
point?" The power to provide for the common 
defense and general welfare conferred sufficient au- 
thority for the purpose. Congress had already ap- 
propriated money for uses not enumerated in the 
Constitution. Of this course there had been gen- 
eral and manifest approval by the people, and 
" surely," he said, "it furnishes better evidence of 
the true interpretation of the Constitution than the 
most refined and subtle arguments." Calhoun's 
bill was passed March 1st, and on March 3d, the 
day before he went out of office, Madison vetoed it 
as unconstitutional. 

Putting aside this measure, in which Calhoun's 
enthusiastic nationalism carried him too far, the 
verdict of impartial history must be that his course 
during the period of his leadership in the House 
was progressive, patriotic and inspiring. He was 



LEADERSHIP OF THE YOUNG MEN 31 

right in helping to bring on the war, in urging its 
vigorous prosecution to the end, in accepting as 
reasonably satisfactory the peace offered by the 
Treaty of Ghent. He was right in opposing the 
policy of embargo and non-intercourse, which tailed 
to coerce the enemy, impoverished part of our own 
population and accentuated sectional differences. 
It would have been far better, as Calhoun insisted, 
if, from the beginning, the people had had their at- 
tention directed to war as the only remedy for their 
grievances, instead of being encouraged to false 
hopes. 

The Federalists were hopelessly in the wrong. 
Even if their opposition to engaging in the war is 
defensible, their conduct during its progress is not. 
They felt no community of interest with their fellow 
countrymen who were not of the same party as 
themselves ; but while the country was locked in a 
death struggle, remained apart, sullen, critical and 
even disloyal. The seat of national sentiment was 
with the young Republicans of the South and West, 
who at this period shaped the national destiny. It 
was fortunate that they did so, for if the old Repub- 
licans, less wise and more prudent than the young 
statesmen who set them aside, or the timid and un- 
patriotic Federalists, had been in control, there 
would have been continued submission to outrages. 
Moreover, it would have been a submission forced 
upon a great number of the people, amoug whom 
there might have arisen a dangerous feeling of 
irritation against the government. Even if a ma- 



32 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

jorityhad supported the course, the minority would 
have been large and active, and, blaming the 
government for an intolerable condition of affairs, 
would doubtless soon have become disaffected. 
The people would have been more seriously dis- 
united in peace than they were in war. Great 
Britain, confirmed in her belief that America had 
neither spirit nor strength to resist her measures, 
would also have been convinced that there was a 
large party in the United States, more British than 
American in feeling ; that this party would support 
her plans ; and that these plans might eventually 
include efforts again to bring the country within 
the circle of British control. The clique of abso- 
lutely disloyal Federalists, who clung to the skirts 
of the old mother and shared her fears of free gov- 
ernment, would have remained an influential ele- 
ment in a great party and would perhaps have 
grown in strength. One of the most far-reaching 
results of the war was that it drove these Federal- 
ists into the open, where public condemnation was 
concentrated on them and annihilated them, and 
thereafter there was no disloyal faction in the land. 
The successes of the war and the enthusiasm and 
confidence of the young leaders in Congress aroused 
the people, and when peace came opportunely and 
honorably, it was followed by a national feeling, 
stronger and deeper than had ever before existed in 
the republic. At length the nation was emanci- 
pated from European politics, and realized that it 
had a mission of its own and strength to fulfil it. 



LEADERSHIP OF THE YOUNG MEN 33 

Never again was there an English party or a French 
party, and the halls of Congress echoed no more 
with speeches which would have sounded better in 
London or Versailles. The leading strings were 
broken, and the country bounded forward on its 
own way toward its own destiny. All this was 
brought about by the second war with Great 
Britain ; and to few is the debt larger than to the 
men who forced the great issue. In the front rank 
of the gallant band stood John C. Calhoun. 



CHAPTER in 

" A MOST CAPTIVATING MAN " 

The six years of service in the House fixed Cal- 
houn's career, and he was a public man for the rest 
of his life. He possessed many of the qualities to 
bring- success. He had been accustomed to responsi- 
bility, having relied on himself from boyhood. He 
had beeu bred in a school rigidly honest. His finan- 
cial circumstances rendered him independent of his 
official salary. "My highest ambition as to 
money," he said in 1837, " is to be independent in 
a moderate and plain mode of living. I have just 
about sufficient for that purpose and it is all I 
want." He had an orderly, analytical mind, a clear 
mental vision, and his speeches were more direct 
and forcible than those of any other leader of the 
period. From the time he entered the House, he 
had steadily improved as a public speaker, and he 
was too sensible to yield to the wishes of some of his 
friends, who begged him to cultivate the more orna- 
mental style of oratory which was then so popular, 
but which he never condescended to use. 

Behind him stood a constituency to whom he was 
an object of increasing pride, and he reflected the 
dominant sentiment of South Carolina perfectly. 
Early in his career he had been accepted by the 
whole state. His marriage into a low-country 



"A MOST CAPTIVATING MAN" 35 

family of Huguenot descent had given him a stand- 
ing in Charleston without which his political ad- 
vancement would have been difficult, for Charleston 
often controlled the state. There political and 
social life were inextricably blended and family 
prestige counted for much. It attached especially 
to those whose ancestors had come from France to 
America when the Edict of Nantes was revoked. 

When Calhoun first went to Washington, no 
reputation preceded him, and during the six years 
of his service in the House he made the city a mere 
stopping-place and not a home. Nevertheless, he 
found the social life pleasant and mingled in it 
freely. It was composed, for the most part, of men 
of the same class as himself. From the old sea- 
board communities came a few people who enjoyed 
hereditary social prominence, and from the new 
West were also a few who were primitively ignorant 
of polite usages ; but the majority were men who 
had had wholesome, if plain, home surroundings, 
who had received careful, if not elegant, home edu- 
cation, and who, if not gently bred, were certainly 
well bred ; nor had any of them ever lived in a 
society in which there were people who treated them 
as inferiors. 

During the early part of his congressional service, 
Calhoun occupied the same boarding-house as Clay, 
Cheves and Lowndes, and they became known as 
the "strongest war mess in Congress." Mrs. 
Cheves, at once beautiful and charming, presided 
over them, being the only woman in the party. 



36 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

There was enough society in the city to make the 
time go pleasantly. The permanent local group 
and the passing political lights blended harmoni- 
ously, and over them all beamed the genial lumi- 
nary in the Executive Mansion. Dolly Madison's 
sway was undisputed during the eight years of her 
husband's presidency, and those were the golden 
days of the White House. She felt kindly toward 
" the war mess," whose members had come on the 
scene to rescue her husband's administration, and 
Calhoun attended her "drawing-rooms," by which 
royal term her simple receptions were known. The 
young statesman was favorably received and liked 
everywhere, for he was handsome, unassuming, of 
good manners and pleasant speech. Many people 
were drawn to him by his rising fame, and looking 
upon his strong, firmly-set features and deep un- 
fathomable eyes, saw in him an indescribable 
attribute which set him apart from his fellow men 
and proclaimed him to be molded upon greater 
lines. 

During the whole of his congressional career, 
from 1811 to 1817 when he entered the cabinet, 
Mrs. Calhoun remained at home in South Carolina 
with her increasing family, and the long separations 
were the most disagreeable circumstance of his 
life, for he was a devoted husband and father. 
Upon this wife, as upon other wives of Southern 
planters who were in public life, devolved great 
responsibility which was well discharged, for 
she had the undivided management of the house- 



" A MOST CAPTIVATING MAN " 37 

hold, and also, during her husband's long absences, 
of the farm as well. 

In the autumn of 1811, just before Calhoun left 
for Washington, their first child was born, who, 
being a boy, was called after the father's cousin and 
friend, Andrew Pickens. In January, 1814, while 
he was in Washington, the second child was born— 
a girl, who received the beautiful name of Floride, 
after her mother and grandmother. The next year 
Calhoun returned home from Congress in March 
and in April the child died after a short illness. 
He wrote to his "mother," as he always called 
Floride Bonneau : "She had just begun to talk 
and walk ; and progressed so fast in both as to sur- 
prise every one. She could hardly step when I re- 
turned on the 20th of March and before her death 
she could run all over the house. But why should 
I dwell on these once flattering appearances'? She 
is gone, alas ! from us forever ; and has left behind 
nothing but our grief and tears." 

In the autumn of 1817, after he had been made 
Secretary of War, Calhoun brought his family to 
Washington, took a house near the general post- 
office, and settled down with the intention of making 
the capital his home. His wife's mother joined 
him, and together they bought " Oakly," a commo- 
dious place on the heights above Georgetown, where 
he spent the summer months. The Calhouus now 
became a part of the city's life, and "old Mrs. 
Calhoun," as his mother-in-law was called to dis- 
tinguish her from his wife, was an important per- 



38 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

sonage. In 1822, when cholera ravaged the city, 
she participated in an active religious revival, and 
along with an enthusiastic young Presbyterian 
clergyman " beat up recruits," as she expressed it. 
But she complained that she could not include her 
daughter and son-in-law among them. He was, as 
we have seen, brought up in the Presbyterian faith ; 
but he did not adhere to it strictly. Unitarianism 
attracted him, as it did many other public men of 
his day ; he contributed to the erection of the first 
Unitarian Church in Washington and had a pew 
there. To William W. Seaton, the co-editor of 
the National Intelligencer, he once remarked, that 
Unitarianism was "the true faith, and must ulti- 
mately prevail over the world." l Notwithstanding 
this, he commonly attended the Episcopal Church 
of which his wife was a member. He was attached 
to any or all churches, and infidelity never entered 
into his life ; but a religions man in the churchman's 
understanding of the word he was not. 

He and his wife accepted the usual social duties 
of their position, entertaining freely, giving formal 
state-parties and evening-parties, and occasionally 
a grand ball. They had been living in the city a 
little more than two years when a domestic affliction 
served to show the extraordinary esteem in which 
they were held. In the spring of 1820 their youngest 
child, Elizabeth, not yet a year old, fell ill, and 
people thronged to the house to express sympathy 
for the father and mother. An intimate friend of 
1 Seaton's Biography, p. 158. 



"A MOST CAPTIVATING MAN" 39 

the Calhouns wrote to her sister :"I have never in 
my life witnessed such attentions. Ladies of the 
first and gayest fashion, as well as particular friends, 
pressed their attendance in away not to be denied." 
The President called every day, and his daughter, 
Mrs. Hay, although in the midst of the bridal 
festivities of her sister, who was married at this time, 
insisted upon being one of the baby's nurses. Mrs. 
Adams and twenty other ladies were also in attend- 
ance and their solicitude at last became a positive 
embarrassment, "All this," says their friend, 
" was not a mere tribute to rank ; — no, I am per- 
suaded much of it was from that good-will which Mr. 
and Mrs. Calhoun have universally excited. They 
are really beloved." On March 21id the child died, 
and on the same day the gallant Decatur was killed 
in a duel by Commodore Barron. The spectacular 
funeral of the naval hero and the simple funeral of 
the child took place within a few hours of each 
other, and the high dignitaries who went to the one 
afterward attended the other. 1 

The amiable and unassuming wife of the young 
secretary made friends easily, but her husband 
seemed to exert a fascination over people, so charm- 
ing was his personality and so winning were his 
manners. Younger men especially fell under his 
spell, and he now formed the habit of attaching them 
to him, and imparting to their impressionable minds 
his views on public questions. Maturer and colder 

1 Margaret Bayard Smith's TJie First Forty Years of Washington 
Society (1906), p. 149. 



40 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

hearts also warmed toward him. James Monroe, 
an old mau with affections past the formative stage, 
confessed that he loved him ; and Miss C. M. Sedg- 
wick, of Boston, an old woman, meeting him at this 
time, declared afterward that she was not able to judge 
the merits of his pamphlet, in reply to General Jack- 
son's charges in the Seminole affair, because "the 
light of his splendid eye still lingered in her imagina- 
tion," and his face, which was " stamped with 
nature's aristocracy," had charmed her. 1 William 
Wirt, the accomplished Attorney -General, Calhoun's 
colleague in the cabinet, who was under no obliga- 
tions to him, wrote to a friend in Virginia, No- 
vember 12, 1824, that he was "a most captivating 
man " — " the very character to strike a Virginian — 
ardent, generous, high-minded, brave, with a genius 
full of fire, energy and light ; a devoted patriot, 
proud of his country, and prizing her glory above 
his life." He predicted that a little more experience 
would "mellow him" for any service that his 
country might require. 2 

But there was another, one of the most critical 
men that ever lived, and always disposed harshly 
to judge his fellows, who regarded Calhoun as fitted 
for the highest honors of the republic, until they be- 
came rivals for those honors. John Quincy Adams, 
the Secretary of State, met Calhoun for the first time 
at Monroe's council-table and soon saw in him the 
only man in the administration who was his equal 

1 The First Forty Years of Washington Society, p. 334. 

2 Keunedy's Memoir of Wirt, Vol. II, p. 185. 



"A MOST CAPTIVATING MAN" 41 

in mental equipment. After an intimate and al- 
most daily association for nearly two years, he asked 
him to accept the mission to France. He made the 
offer, he said, because he expected "more from him 
than from any man living, to the benefit of the pub- 
lic service of the nation," and wished, "from 
merely public motives that he could go and spend 
some time in Europe," as the experience would en- 
large his usefulness. Calhoun replied that he knew 
the advantages to be derived from foreign observa- 
tion, but that his private circumstances would not 
permit it. A year later Adams recorded the opin- 
ion that the South Carolinian was a statesman of a 
philosophical turn, and after they had served to- 
gether four years he said on October 15, 1821 : 
"Calhoun is a man of fair and candid mind, of 
honorable principles, of clear and quick under- 
standing, of cool self-possession, of enlarged philo- 
sophical views, and of ardent patriotism. He is 
above all sectional and factious prejudices more 
than any other statesman of this Union with whom 
I have ever acted. He is more sensitive to the 
transient manifestations of momentary public opin- 
ion, more afraid of the first impressions of public 
opinion than I am." 

Even after tlie passage of the first Missouri bill, 
Adams, on October 1, 1822, was able to say : " Cal- 
houn has no petty scruples about constructive pow- 
ers and state-rights. ' ' But Adams' s feelings toward 
him underwent a change, and the society of Wash- 
ington as well developed an anti-Calhoun circle in 



42 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

the active rivalry of the candidates for the presi- 
dency, for this rivalry involved the whole city, and 
divided it into hostile camps. ISo opponent of Cal- 
houn, however, could truthfully criticize his man- 
agement of the War Department. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE SECRETARY OF WAR 

When Monroe organized his cabinet, he did not 
at first intend to invite Calhoun into it, but wished 
to secure a western man to be his Secretary of War. 
He offered the post to Clay, who declined it, being 
offended because he was not made the Secretary of 
State. He next thought of Andrew Jackson, as he 
took pains to tell him, but knew he would not serve. 
Governor Shelby, of Tennessee, refused, then Wil- 
liam Lowndes, and finally he called on Calhoun. 
Monroe's system of government was impersonal, and 
he surrounded himself only with men of reputation 
and following who brought strength and popularity 
to his administration. Such a one was Calhoun, 
although he had had no experience in executive 
office and was the youngest man in the cabinet, be- 
ing only thirty-five years old. His friends thought 
that his genius lay not in the direction of adminis- 
tration, and advised him to remain in the House, 
where his future was assured ; but he desired to en- 
large his experience and test his capacity, and was 
not deterred by the knowledge that the affairs of the 
War Department were in a chaotic condition. He 
entered on his new duties December 6, 1817, and at 
the end of the next three months began reorganizing 



44 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

his department. He drafted a bill for this purpose, 
which was passed on April 14, 1818. It provided 
for a bureau system which is maiutaiued with modi- 
fication, to the present day. Ou December 18, 1S18, 
he submitted a report on the general military ad- 
ministration, so able and complete that even Tim- 
othy Pickering, the old irreconcilable, was moved 
to write in its praise. He promulgated a full code 
of rules for the government of his department. 
When he became Secretary, its unsettled accounts 
aggregated upward of $40,000,000, and he paid all 
but a few millions which were impossible of liquida- 
tion. Indian affairs he managed with firmness and 
humanity, and he showed foresight by recommend- 
ing that the savages be sent west of the Mississippi 
and taught civilized ways. 

He brought down the expenditures of the army 
from $4,000,000 to $2,500,000 annually, without de- 
creasing the comfort of officers or men, or lessening 
their pay. His system of fastening responsibility 
for expenditures and care of government property 
resulted in an enormous saving to the government. 
In 1821 he reduced the army to a force of about 
5,000 officers and men, incurring, of course, the 
hostility of those officers whom he was obliged to 
discharge ; but the army remained as he organized 
it and his department was administered on the 
system which he inaugurated, until the Mexican 
War, twenty years after he ceased to be Secretary. 
He gave form to the movement for the improvement 
and enlargement of the Military Academy at West 



THE SECRETARY OF WAR 45 

Point. At first be favored the establishment of two 
academies, one at the youth and the other at the 
North ; but finding this idea unpopular, he aban- 
doned it and secured the necessary legislation to 
start the old one in the right path. General Simon 
Bernard, who was then the head of the Engineer 
Corps, and who had served in the French army as 
a general officer under Napoleon, declared that Cal- 
houn's ability as an administrator reminded him of 
that of Bonaparte himself. He planned a complete 
system of coast defenses from Mount Desert to New 
Orleans, but the friends of William H. Crawford, 
Secretary of the Treasury, scenting in this bold ex- 
ecutive officer, a probable candidate for the presi- 
dency, threw themselves in the way of his advance 
and defeated this ambitious project. 

In the distribution of the patronage of his depart- 
ment Calhoun did not consider his own political ad- 
vancement. The spoils system was at the time 
dormant, because the government had been in the 
hands of one party for sixteen years. Where a 
vacancy was to be filled, there was some political 
pressure in favor of the various applicants, but re- 
movals were not asked for party reasons, and Cal- 
houn and his associates cousidered such dismissals 
improper. They were not averse to inquiry into 
the political affiliations of those whom they ap- 
pointed ; but there was no office brokerage so far as 
they were concerned. Calhoun made his friend and 
follower, Christopher Van Derventer, chief clerk 
of his department, but the post was a peculiarly 



46 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

confidential one, and corresponded with that of the 
Assistant Secretary of War at the present day. He 
also provided for Thomas L. McKenuey, in the In- 
dian service, but during the time the latter was edit- 
ing a Calhoun newspaper, he was not employed in 
the Wur Department. 

The most important duties of a cabinet officer do 
not consist in the administration of the business 
affairs of his department, but iu shaping the gen- 
eral policy of the government. Monroe consulted 
his cabinet constantly. He made it really an ex- 
ecutive council, and its members must share with 
him the credit belonging to one of the most success- 
ful administrations in our history. In the council 
Calhoun's voice was usually on the side of bold ac- 
tion. In 1823 when there was a rumor that England 
was about to occupy Cuba, he proposed that the 
United States seize the island. In common with 
nearly all Eepublicans of the period, he favored its 
acquisition. He took the side of the South Ameri- 
can states in their revolt against Spain, and was 
even willing to espouse the cause of the Greeks 
against the Turks. He was heartily in accord with 
the Monroe Doctrine, —that Europe should not be 
permitted to colonize any more on the American 
continent. He was scrupulously loyal to his chief, 
and when an effort was made by Crawford's friends 
in 1818 to create dissension between them by a reso- 
lution, calling on the Secretary of War for a report 
on the making of roads and canals for military pur- 
poses, although he submitted an elaborate statement 



THE SECRETARY OF WAR 47 

pointing out the benefit of such internal improve- 
ments, he gave no intimation that he deemed it the 
duty of Congress to provide for them. It was well 
known that he favored them, and that Monroe re- 
garded them as unconstitutional. The report, how- 
ever, was in effect, an excellent argument in favor 
of internal improvements and was generally so con- 
sidered. Of the President the young secretary formed 
a high estimate, as did all men of discernment who 
knew him well. Writing of him on August 8, 1831, 
he said : "Though not brilliant, few men were his 
equals in wisdom, firmness and devotion to the 
country. He had a wonderful patience ; and could 
above all men that I ever knew, when called on to 
decide on an important point, hold the subject im- 
movably fixed under his attention, till he had 
mastered it in all its relations. It was mainly to 
this admirable quality, that he owed his highly ac- 
curate judgment. I have known many much more 
rapid in reaching the conclusion, but very few with 
a certainty so unerring." 

In the consequences to himself, the most impor- 
tant occurrence during Calhoun's service in the 
cabinet, was his treatment of General Andrew Jack- 
son's insubordination in the Seminole War, but it 
was not known at the time that he opposed leniency 
toward the General, and as the affair did not bear 
fruit till Calhoun was Vice-President, an account of 
it must be reserved for a later page. 

During the whole four years of Monroe's second 
term in office, three of the five members of his cabi- 



48 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

net were active aspirants to succeed him and at 
enmity with one another. Crawford was a veteran 
candidate and instigated attacks in the press and in 
Congress against Calhoun and Adams, whom he 
hated because they were in his way. They in turn 
hated him ; and soon Adams and Calhoun fell out. 
In March, 1821, Calhoun told Ninian Edwards, a 
senator from Illinois, and a lieutenant of Adams's, 
that he had no idea of being a candidate for the 
presidency. Adams therefore believed that he 
could count on Calhoun's assistance in his own can- 
didacy ; but later in the year a concerted movement 
for the South Carolinian was made by Pennsylvania 
Democrats and his ambition was fired at once. The 
leaders in this campaign were Thomas J. Rogers, a 
representative from Pennsylvania, and Samuel D. 
Ingham, who had served in the House with Calhoun. 
Rogers himself was a manufacturer, and there is no 
doubt that Calhoun's record as a protectionist was 
one reason why the Pennsyh auians desired to see 
him elected. In December, 1821, a part of the 
legislature of South Carolina put William Lowndes 
in nomination. He was then the foremost man in 
the state, being there regarded as greater than 
Calhoun, and was besides the most popular man in the 
House. But the hand of death was visibly upon him 
and he was seeking a way to retire from public life, 
which he never liked, and not to increase its cares. 
Politicians in Washington were amazed to see Cal- 
houn and Lowndes associating in perfect amity after 
both had been put in nomination for the presidency, 



THE SECEETAEY OF WAE 49 

but there was no real rivalry between them. Cal- 
houn knew that the choice of Lowndes was chiefly 
a compliment and that he himself could have the 
support of South Carolina when he desired it. Nev- 
ertheless, he called the nomination "a very rash 
aud foolish movement." He held a conversation 
with his colleague about it and asked whether he 
should withdraw ; but Lowndes said no, and together 
they took measures to prevent the collision of their 
friends. 1 After Lowndes's death in November, 
1822, the legislature nominated Calhoun. 

Thus it happened that, for a j>eriod covering 
thirty years, from the time he was a young man un- 
til his death at the age of sixty-eight, Calhoun was 
an aspirant to the presidency. He stooped to no 
ignoble acts to obtain the nomination, and this can 
be said of few American statesmen who have been 
in a position similar to his. He always believed 
that his political conduct was not influenced by his 
presidential aspirations, and he endeavored to keep 
himself free from such influences. But this over- 
weening ambition was ever in his mind ; his friends 
were incessantly scheming to nominate him and al- 
ways talking to him about it, and he himself was 
constantly reckoning his chances. The effect upon 
his thoughts and actions was subtle but certain, at 
times easily discernible, and often unfortunate. 

Having been proposed for the presidency by the 
Pennsylvania meeting and by his own state, and 

1 Calhoun to Maxcy, December 31, 1821. Markoe Papers, 
Library of Congress MSS. 



50 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

seeing an increasing number of followers about him, 
Calhoun made an active campaign in his own behalf. 
The newspapers in Washington being friendly to 
Crawford, Thomas L. McKenny left the War De- 
partment and started the Washington Republican and 
Congressional Examiner in August, 1822. Noah, of 
the National Advocate, truly said that the mission of 
the new paper was to defend the administration, at- 
tack Crawford and support Calhoun's candidacy for 
the presidency ; but it was a reputable publication 
and its articles were well written. Calhoun strongly 
opposed the nomination of candidates by congres- 
sional caucuses, declaring that this was a right to 
be exercised by the people. In this view he was 
entirely correct, and Crawford's chief strength lay 
in Congress. 

When Adams found that this novice in public 
life had dared to enter a race in which he was a 
competitor, the favorable opinion he had thus far 
entertained of Calhoun underwent a change, and he 
became especially bitter when he discovered that 
some who he thought were his friends had chained 
themselves to Calhoun's car, believing his would be 
the triumph. He now saw plots and counterplots 
to undo him ; and declared that Calhoun would ruin 
himself with his " hurried ambition." Finally, on 
April 18, 1824, he set down this estimate of him 
whom, a few years before, he had deemed the most 
promising public man in the United States : " Prec- 
edent and popularity — this is the bent of his mind. 
The primary principles involved in any public ques- 



THE SECEETAEY OF WAE 51 

tion are the last that occur to him. What has been 
done, and what will be said, are the Jachiii and Boa/ 
of his argument. ' ' 

Fifteen years after this contest, Calhoun .spoke of 
it as an ambition in the heat of youthful years pur- 
sued by honorable means, and so undoubtedly it 
was. It may well be doubted whether it improved 
his political fortunes, for it aroused lasting an- 
tagonisms, and the conditions favorable to his 
success were never present. 

The contest was a unique one. Adams, Crawford 
and Calhoun being residents of Washington, it was 
the chief scene of the rival maneuvering. There 
were Crawford parties at the theatres and Calhoun 
dinners. It was soon noted that Calhoun was not as 
universally popular as he had been before he became 
a presidential candidate. There was a rude dis- 
turbance to the little self-centred world at the capi- 
tal when the legislature of Tennessee placed Andrew 
Jackson in nomination and a convention in Pennsyl- 
vania soon followed this lead, at the same time 
nominating Calhoun for the vice-presidency. When 
this occurred, Adams was probably South Carolina's 
second choice, but in order to insure Calhoun's 
election to the vice-presidency, the state promptly 
fell into line for Jackson also. Calhoun was quick 
to read the signs of the times and withdrew from a 
race in which he saw he could not win. 

Doubtless he was in favor of Jackson's election, 
for he wrote to him on March 30, 1828, to say : "I 
find few with whom I accord so fully in relation to 



52 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

political subjects, as yourself." 1 He agreed, how- 
ever, to accept the vice- presidency, aud being op- 
posed neither by Adams uor Jackson, was elected 
in the autumn of 1625 by a vote of 182 to 30 for 
Nathan Sanford, the Federalist candidate. All of 
the electors who voted for Adams, except those from 
Connecticut, supported him, as did all who voted 
for Jackson, except seven from New York ; but all 
who voted for Crawford voted against him, as did 
most of Clay's adherents. 

With the termination of his service in the cabinet, 
bis active career as a nationalist statesman came to 
an end. It had extended over a period of fifteen 
years, and he had been a great representative and 
Secretary of War ; but by accepting the vice-presi- 
dency, he precluded the possibility of his perform- 
ing notable service as long as he held that office. 
Why did he seek this lazy dignity? The inactivity 
of the office would render it easy to avoid making 
new enemies, while not losing old friends, and there 
was the precedent before him of two Vice-Presidents 
having been promoted to the presidency. A season 
of aloofness from the prevailing political turmoil 
would strengthen his chances of advancement, and 
his rivals were in a fair way to cut each other's 
throats. Thus far his career had been one of re- 
markable progress upward, and his qualifications 
for public service had had free opportunity for 
demonstration. All that was best in him had come 
forward, and his course had been unvexed by the 
1 Blair Papers, Library of Congress MSS. 



THE SECEETAEY OF WAR 53 

fatal question, which, whenever it got before the 
country, threw national statesmanship into the 
background, and made all public men either North- 
erners or Southerners. 

There was never a period before the Civil War 
when the slavery question was so quiescent as dur- 
ing the years of Calhoun's service in the House and 
in Monroe's cabinet. In 1807, the constitutional 
period for permitting the slave-trade terminated, 
and no one dared to propose a revival of this ' ' odious 
traffic, ' ' as Calhoun himself once called it. When the 
first Missouri bill came up in 1819, Calhoun, being 
in the cabinet, did not take sides actively, but he 
mildly favored the compromise. In the debate on 
the bill the anti-slavery party attacked South Caro- 
lina, because her slave laws were more severe than 
those of auy other Southern state, but no Southern 
members rose to say that slavery was good, although 
all opposed its restriction by the national govern- 
ment. Eeid, of Georgia, correctly expressed the 
Southern attitude when he said : " Believe me, sir, 
I am not the panegyrist of slavery. It is an un- 
natural state ; a dark cloud which obscures half the 
lustre of our free institutions ! . . . Would it 
be fair ; would it be manly ; would it be generous ; 
would it be just, to offer contumely and contempt 
to the unfortunate man who wears a cancer in his 
bosom, because he will not submit to cautery at the 
hazard of his existence V 

The Southerners felt that the efforts to restrict 
slavery were leveled at an institution inextricably 



54 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

interwoven with their very life, and that if the 
anti-slavery party were successful now, it would 
later have them at its mercy. The next step would 
be toward a general emancipation, which would im- 
poverish them and leave them to face a new problem 
as difficult of solution as slavery itself. The debate 
in Congress showed that the broad nationalism of 
which Calhoun was so fine an example was impos- 
sible of long continuance, and that the country must 
soon divide into hostile sections. During the agi- 
tation of the Missouri question, he was greatly con- 
cerned. He told Adams that he did not think, as 
some did, that it would cause a dissolution of the 
Union. If it did, however, he had no doubt that the 
South would be obliged to form an alliance with Great 
Britain. What his real views were on the subject he 
confided to a friend in a letter on August 12, 1820. 

' ' I regret that any pretext should have been 
given by the Missouri convention, by which an ob- 
jection might be raised to her admission ; but I do 
hope that all that is virtuous or considerate in the 
non-slaveholding states, will in any shape discoun- 
tenance the renewal of so dangerous a question. I 
can scarcely conceive of a cause of sufficient power 
to divide this Union, unless a belief in the slave- 
holding states, that it is the intention of the other 
states gradually to undermine their property in their 
slaves and that a disunion is the only means to avert 
the evil. Should so dangerous a mode of believing 
once take root, no one can calculate the conse- 
quences ; and it will be found, that a re-agitation of 



THE SECEETAEY OF WAE 55 

the Missouri question will tend strongly to excite 
such a belief." l 

When the compromise bill came before the Presi- 
dent for his approval, in February, 1821, there was a 
stormy session of the cabinet over the question of 
the power of Congress to prohibit slavery in the 
territories and refuse admission to a slave state. 
Adams allowed himself the rare luxury of speaking 
his thoughts and roundly denounced the institution. 
Calhoun kept silent, but when he and Adams were 
walking home together, as they often did after the 
cabinet meetings, he said that he regarded such 
views on the subject of freedom as just and noble, 
but that in the South they were considered to apply 
only to the white race. Domestic labor, he said, 
was confined to the blacks, and such was the 
prejudice, that if he, who was the most popular man 
in his district, were to keep a white servant in his 
house, his character and reputation would be irre- 
trievably ruined. This condition was attended 
with many excellent consequences, he thought. 
It applied not to farming, manufacturing and me- 
chanical labor— he and his father before him had 
often followed the plow— but to the lower forms of 
manual labor, the proper work of slaves. No 
white person could descend to that. And it was 
the best guarantee of equality among the whites. 
It produced an unvarying level among them. It 
did not even admit of inequalities, by which one 
white man could domineer over another. 

1 To Gallaway. Markoe Papers, Library of Congress MSS. 



56 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

The questions originally put to his cabinet by Mon- 
roe were : (1) Has Congress power to prohibit slav- 
ery in a territory f And (2) Has Congress power to 
prohibit slavery forever in a state when it is admitted 
to the Union'? As the latter aroused contention, 
Calhoun suggested that the two questions be merged 
into one : Is the compromise bill constitutional ? 
and to this all answered, Yes. 



CHAPTEE V 

A LOOKER-ON 

Ox March 4, 1825, Calhouu took the oath of office 
as Vice-President of the United States. He in- 
tended to maintain his handsome residence on 
Georgetown Heights; but in the course of a few- 
months found that he could not do so on bis meagre 
salary, and, his private income being much dimin- 
ished by the increasing agricultural depression in 
South Carolina, he definitely abandoned the idea of 
making Washington other than a place of tempo- 
rary abode. In the summer of 1826 the serious ill- 
ness of his son John caused him to hasten the per- 
manent departure which he had planned for the 
autumn. He broke up housekeeping, sent his fur- 
niture South, and took possession of " Clergy Hall," 
his place at Pendleton, until he should build a house 
at Fort Hill, which he did shortly afterward. All 
his private and social interests now centred in his 
native state. His family comprised four boys and 
two girls. Sometimes one or two of them and Mrs. 
Calhoun accompanied him to Washington for the ses- 
sions of Congress, but more often he went alone and 
he never again established himself there. He at- 
tended conscientiously to the duties of his office, 
however, always presiding over the Senate from the 



58 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

beginning to the end of each session, in this re- 
spect offering a contrast to his predecessor, Daniel 
D. Tompkins, who absented himself from Washing- 
ton almost continuously while he was Vice-President. 
Calhoun did not believe that he had the right 
to interrupt a senator in debate, or stop him from 
speaking forever, or call him to order for anything 
improper which he might say. As he was only the 
Senate's servant, his conduct must be regulated by 
the Senate's rules or omission of rules. Accord- 
ingly, when the administration's bill for a congress 
of American nations at Panama was under debate, 
and several senators abused the adminis! ration, he 
did not check them ; and John Randolph of Roa- 
noke let loose upon Adams and Clay a flood of pic- 
turesque billingsgate, which caused the President to 
take up his pen, and, under the assumed name of 
" Patrick Henry," write an attack on the Vice- 
President for his refusal to call abusive senators to 
order. Calhoun replied over the name of "Onslow," 
and everybody knew who "Patrick Henry " and 
"Onslow" were. It was a remarkable sight — the 
President and Vice-President in a joust with visors 
down, yet hardly trying to conceal their identity. 
Who was victor is unimportant. Randolph's 
speeches were those of a drunken man, and he merited 
rebuke ; but Calhoun was contending for a principle. 
Two years later the Senate made a rule, giving the 
Vice-President power to call a senator to order for 
words spoken in debate. Adams might claim a vic- 
tory, but so might Calhoun, because the Senate by 



A LOOKER-ON 59 

making the rule implied that the Vice-President 
had not the power without it. Before the news- 
paper duel, Adams aud Calhoun were lukewarm 
friends, for the latter would have preferred the elec- 
tion of Jacksou, for whom South Carolina had 
voted, and he did not approve of Clay's selection as 
Secretary of State, believing the stories of the bar- 
gain between him and Adams. Clay thought the 
Vice-President had encouraged senators to vote 
against his confirmation as Secretary of State, aud 
hesitated about calling upon him ; but the President 
and Calhoun maintained social relations. Tale- 
bearers, however, told Adams that Calhoun had 
spoken disrespectfully of the administration, and 
this, added to his refusal to stop Randolph's 
speeches, caused the splenetic President to hate 
the Vice-President most bitterly. Being alone 
with his diary one day, he confided to posterity this 
opinion : ' ' Calhoun is a man of considerable talent 
and burning ambition ; stimulated to frenzy by suc- 
cess, flattery, aud premature advancement ; gov- 
erned by no steady principle, but sagacious to seize 
upon every prevailing popular breeze to swell his 
own sails ; showering favors with lavish hand to 
make partisans, without discernment in the choice 
of his instruments, and the dupe and tool of every 
knave cunning enough to drop the oil of fools into 
his ears." 

So Calhoun, having been ostensibly neutral when 
Jackson and Adams were candidates for the presi- 
dency the first time, became an avowed advocate of 



60 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

Jackson for the succession. His own selection was, 
of course, impossible. It was plain from the be- 
ginning of Adams's administration, that he and 
Jackson had a score to settle, and that every one 
else must stand aside ; nevertheless, Calhoun's 
enemies endeavored to destroy him by charging 
in the House that, while Secretary of War, he had 
been guilty of corruption in the matter of a contract 
for work on the ripraps, off Fortress Monroe. He 
promptly demanded an investigation, and a com- 
mittee of the House exonerated him from all blame ; 
but the charges were so obviously trumped up that 
he might safely have ignored them, except for the 
possible effect they might have on his candidacy for 
the presidency at some future time. 

One reason why Calhoun favored Jackson was 
that he would probably advocate a reduction of the 
tariff. When lie became Vice-President, the coun- 
try bad a tariff law which was obnoxious to most of 
the people of his state. It was passed in 1824, and 
extended the protective principle bej'ond the point 
reached by the tariff of 1816, which Lowndes had 
presented to Congress, and which Calhoun had 
helped to enact. For the tariff of 1816 feeble in- 
terest was felt in South Carolina, and the people be- 
ing then prosperous, it cannot be said that they ap- 
proved or disapproved it. When a tariff bill was 
pending in 1820, the House of Representatives of the 
state adopted a report which said that the members 
reprobated the protective system — "above all, 
when they advert to the consequences likely to re- 



A LOOKER-ON 61 

suit from the practice, unfortunately become too 
common of arraying upon questions of national 
policy, the states as distinct and independent sover- 
eignties, in opposition to, or (what is much the same 
thing), with a view to exercise a control over, the 
general government." 

Calhoun recorded no objection to the tariff of 
1824, but a public meeting at Charleston, held while 
the bill was pending, put forth against it a temper- 
ate remonstrance which Hugh S. Legare and 
William Drayton, both afterward leading anti-nul- 
lifiers, had drawn up. When the bill became a 
law, the legislature passed a joint resolution declar- 
ing it an unconstitutional exercise of Federal power. 
This was the first formal declaration of the unconsti- 
tutionality of the tariff, and was the first announce- 
ment on the subject of state rights by South Caro- 
lina. It was supposed that Calhoun did not ap- 
prove of the resolution, for he was then the leader 
of the Nationalists of the state. . The author 
and mover of it was Judge William Smith, of 
Pinckneyville, who was at the head of the State 
Rights party. Because of this, he had been dis- 
placed in the United States Senate in 1823 by the 
election of Robert Young Hayne, who believed in 
a liberal construction of the Constitution. In 1826 
Smith was sent back again in place of William 
Harper, who was then a Nationalist, the tide hav- 
ing turned. The legislature would doubtless at this 
time have refused to elect Calhoun to the Senate, if 
he had been a candidate, on the ground that he was 



62 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

opposed to state rights. He held a position dia- 
metrically the opposite of his position five years 
later. On June 11, 1823, he wrote that he felt so- 
licitous concerning a vacancy on the supreme 
bench. " The Supreme Court of the Union per- 
forms the highest functions under our system. It is 
the mediator between the sovereigns, the state [and] 
general ' governments ; and the actual line which 
separates their authority, must be drawn by this 
high tribunal." 

When the resolutions of 1824 were passed, Cal- 
houn was a candidate for the presidency, having 
been nominated in the protectionist state of Penn- 
sylvania, and it was not supposed that he had 
changed the views which he had announced in 1816. 
The office of Vice-President offered good shelter 
from an ordinary tariff storm, but as he sat silently 
presiding over the Senate, the speeches began to 
sound an ominous note, and it became apparent 
that he must soon take a position. He took the 
same view as his state. He had favored a pro- 
tective tariff when he thought it would be generally 
beneficial to the country, and would unite the sec- 
tions more closely. He was convinced that it had 
brought depression to the section in which he lived 
and antagonism between the sections ; therefore he 
now opposed it. His position as a public man was 
not affected by his private fortunes, but he knew 
from personal experience that agriculture was de- 
pressed, for the revenues from his farms were 
1 Markoe Papers, Library of Cougress MSS. 



A LOOKER-ON 63 

dwindling, and he was in perfect sympathy with 
his suffering neighbors. On May 4, 1828, just be- 
fore the adjournment of Congress, he wrote to his 
brother-in-law and intimate friend, James Edward 
Calhoun, that the depression was universal in the 
South, that the tariff was one of the causes, and 
that if it was persisted in, the South must be re- 
duced to poverty or must make an entire change in 
its industries. It would have been remarkable if, 
under the circumstances, he had nut changed from 
a protectionist to an anti-tariff man, for there can 
be no sentimental attachment to duties on imports. 
No people ever yet favored an economic policy 
which they thought was injuring them, and no 
public man ever favored a revenue law which he 
thought was injuring the people he represented. 
South Carolina and Calhoun may have been wrong 
in believing the tariff a disadvantage to them ; but 
there were the plain facts before their eyes : — that 
the things which the tariff protected were made in. 
the North, and that their products were not pro- 
tected ; that the North was growing more and 
more prosperous, and that they were becoming 
more and more impoverished. Then they got the 
idea that the North was gaining because they were 
losing, and was fattening upon them by means of 
the tariff laws. Upon this conviction was based 
their determination not to submit to these laws any 
longer. 

South Carolina, having protested against the tariff 
law of 1S24, and having discovered that, being in- 



64 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

jurious to the industries of the state, it was also 
unconstitutional, nevertheless acquiesced in its 
operations ; but when another bill making a further 
advance in the protective rates came before Con- 
gress in 1827, the Senate being evenly divided on 
tiie question of passing it, Calhoun killed it by his 
casting vote, this being his first public identifica- 
tion with the anti-tariff party. He might easily 
have avoided this fateful vote, but he conceived it 
to be his duty now to take a position. The effect 
was detrimental to his popularity in Pennsylvania 
and other Northern states, and he firmly believed 
that he was deliberately lessening his chances of at- 
taining the presidency. As yet, however, he took 
no part in the proceedings in his state against the 
tariff, and there events were rapidly shaping them- 
selves without him. 

On July 2, 1827, there was an anti-tariff meeting 
at Columbia, which the Governor, John Taylor, 
presided over ; but the most important man present 
was Dr. Thomas Cooper, President of the South 
Carolina College since 1821, a leader of an im- 
portant school of thought in the state, a man of 
rare talent and learning. Thomas Jefferson thought 
that he was the greatest man in America in tin; 
powers of his mind and in acquired information, 
and John Quincy Adams said : "A learned, 
ingenious, scientific, and talented madcap is Dr. 
Cooper." He had fled from England because of 
political persecution, and was the same Dr. Cooper, 
who, when he lived in Pennsylvania, had been im- 



A LOOKER-ON 65 

prisoned for six months for seditious utterances 
while John Adams was President. 

In 1824 he wrote a pamphlet entitled Consolidation ; 
an Account of Parties in the United States from the 
Convention of 1787 to the Present Period, in the 
course of which he roundly abused Calhoun as the 
very prince of consolidationists. He was the chief 
speaker at the Columbia meeting, and wrote the 
resolutions which it adopted. His economic argu- 
ments were as strong as those of any free-trader of 
the present day, but the importance of his views 
was in their political bearing: "I have said 
that we shall ere long be compelled to calculate 
the value of our Union, and to inquire of what use 
to us is this most unequal alliance. . . . Is it 
worth our while to continue this union of states, 
where the North demands to be our masters and we 
are required to be their tributaries'? . . . The 
question, however, is fast approaching to the alter- 
native of submission or separation." 

The resolutions which he prepared set forth with 
consummate skill the usual arguments against pro- 
tection, denied the right of Congress to pass tax 
laws fostering one industry at the expense of 
another, and said further that such proceedings 
were "calculated to bring on the dangerous in- 
quiry," in what manner the Southern states were 
benefited by the Union. 

Checked by Calhoun's casting vote against them 
in 1827, the protectionists made a vigorous cam- 
paign, and the following year succeeded in pushing 



66 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

through Congress a highly protective tariff bill. It 
was loaded down with so many objectionable 
features that it became known as "the bill of 
abominations." It was received in South Carolina 
with almost universal disapproval, the only ques- 
tion being the form which this disapproval would 
take. 

One of the most effective and uncompromising 
opponents of the protective principle in Congress 
was George MacDuffie, who represented the Colle- 
ton district of South Carolina. In speech he was 
ready and bold — not to say violent. He was a man 
of domineering, irascible temper, a cripple from a 
wound he had got in a duel. He had great 
natural gifts, and had received the best education 
his state afforded, having gone to Dr. Waddell's 
school a few years after Calhoun, and having grad- 
uated with first honors from the South Carolina 
College. Like Calhoun he began his public life as 
a consolidationist. The two men were bound by 
personal ties, for when MacDuffie was a poor boy 
Calhoun's kinsman, William Calhoun, made him 
his protege and paid for his education. He became 
one of the leaders of the nullification forces, but he 
never believed that nullification was a constitu- 
tional remedy. He embraced it as a revolutionary 
measure. What his beliefs had been we shall pres- 
ently see. 

The tariff bill of 1828 having become a law, 
MacDuffie' s constituents held a public meeting at 
Edgefield to give expression to their feelings. The 



A LOOKER-ON 67 

resolutions that were adopted, said: "The con- 
stitutional grounds upon which our fathers resisted 
the pretensions of the British crown are weak and 
trivial, when compared with those upon which we 
stand ; " and, calling upon the memory of the men 
of the Revolution, they urged immediate and 
forcible resistance to the tariff law. Later they 
gave a dinner to MacDuffie at which the speeches 
and toasts reeked with rebellious sentiments. 

A month later (August 14, 1828), there was a 
public meeting at Columbia, which was not so unan- 
imous as the Colleton meeting, for there were 
several men in it who counseled moderation, 
among them Governor John Taylor and David R. 
Williams, formerly governor and United States 
senator. Williams pleaded with the people to 
pause. "There was not a man among us," he 
said, in his speech, "who did not pronounce the 
Hartford Convention a traitorous association ; in- 
disputably it becomes us to look well to it, that we 
do not tread in the very footsteps which we have 
denounced with so much bitterness;" and he 
pointed out the utter folly of forcible resistance to 
the general government. The opening clause of the 
address reported to the meeting, which expressed 
fidelity to the Union, was carried by a majority of 
ouly two votes. 

Calhoun was still a looker-on, and privately en- 
deavored to mitigate the portent of the events in 
which he played no part. What was passing through 
his mind, as his party was rushing past him, was 



68 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

how he could bring into constitutional form the 
sentiments which were plainly developing without 
thought of constitutional restraint. Thus far there 
had been no serious effort to make the Constitution 
fit these sentiments. The citizens of Edgefield and 
Columbia were straining their loyalty but not their 
intellects. On August 26, 1827, Calhoun wrote con- 
fidentially to James Edward Calhoun that the tariff 
was erecting sectional differences, and said of those 
who were remonstrating against it, "I do trust that 
they will not be provoked to step beyond strict 
constitutional remedies." A year later he wrote 
to Monroe, on July 8, 1828, telling him an excess of 
feeling over the tariff was being shown in the staple 
producing states, but that the great body of the peo- 
ple were loyal to the Union. For himself he could 
see no check on such abuses by Congress as the 
tariff, except by fastening responsibility and by fresh 
elections, and this remedy was not sufficient. Our 
system of government was certainly going wrong, 
and if an effective cure was not soon applied, there 
would be disaster. It was dangerous to have the 
country divided into sections on every great subject, 
and the parties would become dangerous, when, by 
a general law, the interests of the majority were ad- 
vanced by sacrificing those of a large minority. 
The effectual remedy was not formed in his mind 
when he wrote this letter ; he was not yet the scien- 
tific nullifier. 

He clung as long as he could to the hope that 
Jackson's election would produce a change. He 



A LOOKEE-ON 69 

wrote to the General on July 10, 1828: "The be- 
lief that those now in power will be displaced shortly; 
and that under an administration formed under your 
auspices, a better order of things will commence, in 
which an equal distribution of the burdens and 
benefit of government, economy, the payment of the 
publick debt, and finally the removal of oppressive 
duties, will be primarily objects of policy is what 
mainly consoles this quarter of the Union under ex- 
isting embarrassment. That your administration 
may be the means of restoring harmony to this dis- 
tracted country and of averting the alarming crisis 
before us is my sincere prayer." 1 

The opposition to the tariff in South Carolina, 
where there were no protected interests, was general, 
but there was a small body of men of high standing 
who still favored a protective policy, as Calhoun had 
done. The belief that the law was unconstitutional 
was also general, but there was a large minority 
who thought it to be constitutional although un- 
just. The party of which MacDuffie and Cooper 
were exponents was not in the beginning of the 
agitation in the majority, but it was ably led by 
skilled politicians and the opposition lacked trained 
leaders. 

After the anti-tariff meeting at Columbia, the 
Union and State Eights party was formed and from 
Charleston issued an address proclaiming devotion 
to the Union. This address had numerous signers, 
all men of substance and high standing, among 
1 Blair Papers, Library of Congress MSS. 



70 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

theni Thomas Lowndes, a relative of the lamented 
William Lowndes; Benjamin Faneuil Hunt, a 
Bostonian by birth, a prominent member of the 
bar and a pupil in his youth of John Quincy Adams ; 
Theodore Gaillard Hunt, a leader among the young 
men, afterward a distinguished representative in 
Congress from Louisiana ; Hugh S. Legare, the most 
accomplished literary man of the state, later Attor- 
ney-General in Tyler's cabinet ; Thomas S. Grimk6, 
a leader of the bar, an uncompromising zealot, who 
followed fearlessly wherever his conscience led him ; 
JoelB. Poinsett, who became Van Buren's Secretary 
of War, a veteran in public life, and almost the 
only one of the Unionist leaders having experience 
in political warfare ; William Drayton, representa- 
tive in Congress, a foster-brother of Bobert James 
Turnbull, one of the most extreme of the expounders 
of the doctrine of state supremacy ; and James 
Louis Petigru, a giant intellect, towering above his 
associates, one of the greatest minds of his time. 
He had had as his partner in the practice of law, 
James Hamilton, Jr., who first announced the doc- 
trine of nullification from the stump. 

When the legislature met for the session of 1828- 
29, the Union forces made a gallant stand against 
the proposition to call a state convention to consider 
the tariff, aud to devise means of accomplishing its 
repeal, or of resisting it ; for there was no doubt 
that such a convention would follow the example set 
by the Edgefield and Columbia meetings. Accord- 
ingly, Legare introduced in the House conciliatory 



A LOOKER ON 71 

resolutions protesting against the tariff, but disap- 
proving of the call for a convention. Grinike fol- 
lowed with resolutions declaring that the tariff law 
was not a breach of the Constitution, but that, as the 
legislature had on a former occasion declared it 
was, the dignity of the state required it to imitate 
the example set by Virginia in 1798 and to apply to 
the other states to join in asking Congress for a de- 
claratory or restrictive amendment to the constitu- 
tion. The legislature adopted neither Grinike' s 
nor Legare's motion, but fastened its attention on 
the expected report of the Committee on Federal 
Relations. A member of that committee, William 
C. Preston, afterward a United States senator, had 
obtained from Calhoun a report, which the com- 
mittee presented to the House, and this was the 
great Exposition of IS 28. 

Congress had adjourned on May 26, 1828. Calhoun 
hastened to return to Pendleton, and from that time 
on had earnest consultations with leading opponents 
of the tariff in his state. He was not, as we have 
seen by his letter to Monroe, a nullifier in July, but 
in the two following months he worked out the 
theory ; for on October 21st, James Hamilton, Jr., 
a representative in Congress, who had been in con- 
ference with Calhoun probably more intimately than 
any one else, made a speech to his constituents at 
Walterborough in which he announced the doctrine 
of nullification, and the idea must have come from 
Calhoun. 

The Exposition addressed itself to the iniquities 



72 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

of the tariff and the constitutional mode of avoiding 
them, but more than the tariff was back of it and 
more than the tariff was in the mind of the man who 
wrote it. In a letter to Virgil Maxcy, September 11, 
1830, he said he had not interfered in the contest in 
the state, " except so far as might seem advisable to 
direct the eye of the state to the Constitution, instead of 
looking beyond it, for the redress of its wrongs." 
He said further : 

" My friends out of the state, seem to think, at 
least many of them, that another duty is imposed 
on me, to step forward in order to arrest the current 
of events. They appear to take it for granted, that 
it is in my power. In this they make a great mis- 
take. In my opinion there is but one man in this 
Union, who can quiet the state ; — I mean the Presi- 
dent of the United States. If he w r ere to come out 
decidedly in his message to Congress, recognizing 
the justice of the complaints of the South, and 
throwing his weight without equivocation on the 
side of equalizing the burdens and benefits of the 
Union, the state would undoubtedly pause, in the 
hope of redress by the general government ; but for 
me, who have so little control over its movements, 
to attempt to stay the present current, were I so in- 
clined, would, under my impression, be almost an 
act of madness. . . 

" If I really believed that civil discord, revolu- 
tion, or disunion would follow from the measures 
contemplated, I would not hesitate, devoted to our 
system of government as I am, to throw myself in 
the current with the view to arrest it at every 
hazard ; but believing that the state, while she is 
struggling to preserve her reserved powers, is acting 



A LOOKER-ON 73 

with devoted loyalty to the Union, no earthly con- 
sideration would induce me to do an act, or utter a 
sentiment, which would cast an imputation on her 
motives. 

"I consider the tariff but as the occasion, rather 
than the real cause of the present unhappy state of 
things. The truth can no longer be disguised, that 
the peculiar domestick institution of the Southern 
states, and the consequent directiou, which that and 
her soil and climate have given to her industry, has 
placed them in regard to taxation and appropriation 
in opposite relation to the majority of the Union ; 
against the danger of which, if there be no protec- 
tive power in the reserved rights of the states, they 
must in the end be forced to rebel, or submit to have 
their permanent interests sacrificed, their domestick 
institutions subverted by colonization and other 
schemes and themselves and children reduced to 
wretchedness." ' 

The legislature listened to the Exposition eagerly. 
In 1824 it had declared the tariff of that year to be 
unconstitutional ; and in 1827, as we shall presently 
see, it had announced the extreme doctrine of state 
sovereignty. Many anti-tariff meetings had been 
held in different parts of the state and resolved that 
the tariff law was too grievous a burden to be borne. 
Resistance had been decided upon ; here was an easy 
way to resist. Disunion and revolution had been 
threatened ; here was the way to avoid both. Here 
was a path carefully laid down which those who fol- 
lowed were to know as the only true way, and they 
were to have the proud consciousness of being the 

1 Markoe Papers, Library of Congress MSS. 



74 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

only people who bad ever understood the meaning 
of the Constitution and the government under which 
they lived. They now had a program and they 
now had a leader. Calhoun was no longer a 
looker-on. 



CHAPTER VI 

SOURCES OF THE CALHOUN DOCTRINE 

"[Calhoun] has invariably deprecated refined 
subtleties and far-fetched constructions, contending 
that as the Constitution was intended for the people, 
it ought to be construed by the plain and obvious 
maxims of common -sense. It is to politicians of a 
widely different character that we are indebted for 
those lawyer-like refinements which will carry the 
Constitution in either direction to any extent, even 
to the confines of anarchy and rebellion." This 
passage is found in a South Carolina newspaper 
of 1822 ; ' and the writer then drew a contrast be- 
tween the statesmen of South Carolina and those of 
Virginia. "The former believe that when all the 
departments of the general government have affirmed 
the constitutionality of an act of Congress, no state 
has a right to oppose it by penal laws any more than 
certain other states had a right to oppose, positively 
or negatively, the late war with Great Britain ; 
whereas, the latter contend that a state, being sov- 
ereign, has a right to decide for herself whether the 
general government has exceeded its power or not, 
and to refuse to yield obedience to its laws accord- 
ingly." 

The article was unjust toward the Virginia states- 
men, who never declared that a single state had 

1 Southern Patriot and Commercial Advertiser, February 19. 



76 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

a right to order disobedience to a law of Congress ; 
but the writer had a fair idea of what came to be 
known as " nullification," and undoubtedly spoke 
with knowledge when he said that Calhoun would 
have none of it. 

Much academical discussion of the meaning of the 
Constitution had been aroused at this time by the 
publication, in 1821, of Yates's Minutes of Debates 
in the Constitutional Convention. The Southern Patriot 
and Commercial Advertiser, of Charleston, said on 
August 28th of that year: 

" Let us be assured of the ground on which we 
stand ; aud whether any number of the states con- 
stituting less than a majority of the people of the 
Uniou, have a right to declare the Constitution vio- 
lated whenever they may consider their rights in- 
fringed. . . . Let the people resume the power 
granted whenever it be abused, but let no single state 
assume the extravagant pretension of judging of such 
abuse under the plea of defending the sovereignty of the 
states. ... A single state, therefore, or any 
number, comprising less than a majority of the 
people of the United States, can have no right in 
good faith to release themselves from the compact 
by which the whole are bound to submit in certain 
cases to the decisions of that tribunal [the Supreme 
Court]. 

"If a majority of the people of the Union con- 
ceive this court tyrannical, let them say so. . . . 
But until this manifestation of popular feeling takes 
place, we hold it to be the duty of the minority, 
whether consisting of one or more states, to submit 
in silence, because there cau be no case of flagrant 
tyranny or wrong." 



SOUKCES OF CALHOUN DOCTKINE 77 

In 1821 MacDuffie wrote a series of newspaper 
articles which were afterward printed as a pamphlet 
entitled, A Defense of a Liberal Construction of the 
Powers of Congress, several paragraphs of which must 
be quoted. ' ' You assert that when any conflict 
shall occur between the general and state govern- 
ments, as to the extent of their respective powers, 
' each party has a right to judge for itself ' ! I con- 
fess I am at a loss to know how such a proposition 
ought to be treated. No climax of political heresies 
can be imagined, in which this might not fairly 
claim a most conspicuous place." He illustrated 
his point by imagining the very case which after- 
ward arose. "Suppose Congress should pass a law 
to 'lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and 
excises,' and that a state legislature should pass 
another, declaring the objects for which the revenue 
was intended unconstitutional, and therefore pro- 
hibiting the officers of the general government, by 
severe penalties, from collecting ' taxes, duties, im- 
posts, and excises' ... I need not multiply 
cases ; for if you will duly consider these, you will 
find enough to satiate your keenest relish for anarchy 
and disorder." In one place he exclaimed : " The 
several independent sovereign states control the 
general government ! This is anarchy itself." It 
is interesting to know that James Hamilton, Jr., 
expressed his full approval of MacDuffie' s sen- 
timents. 

As the an ti -tariff movement grew, it was, of 
course, reflected in many newspaper articles, the 



78 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

most important of which was a series in the Charles- 
ton Mercury in 1827, entitled ' ' The Crisis" and signed 
" Brutus." They were written by Iiobert J. Turn- 
bull and were issued in pamphlet form as soon as 
they had run through the newspaper. 1 Their cir- 
culation was large, and they undoubtedly hastened 
the progress of events. They drove the doctrine of 
state sovereignty and state supremacy through all 
the proud paces of which it was capable, except one. 
The author never presented his readers with a sight 
of the theory of the right of nullification. Ap- 
parently he knew nothing of it or thought nothing 
of it. What he preached was something simpler 
and more easily understood. He said his "feelings 
were more sectional than national" and added : 
" I believe that to the predominance of Ihese feelings 
above all others, we are in future to look for the 
preservation of Southern interests aud Southern 
safety." Approaching the matter from this point 
of view, he found that South Carolina was becoming 
to the North what Ireland was to England. "Let 
Congress beware," he said, " how it approaches us 
with the tariff, or it will tread upon the Kattle- 
snake of the South. It is slow in its resistance, 
Generous in its warning, but may be Deadly in 
its Blow." So far as the question of slavery was 
concerned, "Brutus" said that South Carolina 
ought to withdraw from the Union the very instant 
Congress should touch the subject as an evil. 

1 The Crisis : or, Essays on the Usurpations of the Federal Govern- 
ment, by " Brutus." 



SOURCES OF CALHOUN DOCTRINE 79 

Resistance and disunion were the remedies which he 
advocated. He wanted the legislature to remonstrate 
solemnly, and bring the remonstrance to the atten- 
tion of Congress in a manner so imposing as to 
make that body understand that persistence in its 
policy would cause the state to withdraw from the 
Union. "Brutus" praised Judge William Smith's 
resolutions of 1824, and said that he regarded them 
as a triumph over Calhoun's politics. He placed 
the blame for the rapid advance of the government 
toward consolidation upon the administration of 
Monroe, and upon Calhoun as a part of it, and spoke 
of the latter' s report in 1818 on military roads and 
canals as a "magnificent sarcophagus," in which 
he had put a doctrine of Federal power that he had 
disinterred from a long- forgotten grave. He said 
that he admired Calhoun, but regarded his political 
beliefs with disapproval. He used up many pages 
in refuting the consolidation arguments of George 
MacDuffie. He praised Hugh S. Legare for his 
answer to MacDuffie in 1825, and William Drayton 
for opposing the theory that the tariff was con- 
stitutional. 

The papers of " The Crisis " were all intemperate 
and inflammatory ; some were painfully brutal, and 
in places the author completely lost his head in the 
torrents of his rage. The Union party looked upon 
his fulminations with dismay, knowing their fatal 
effect, if they should be accepted by the people of 
the state. The legislature, meeting soon after 
the last article had appeared, was influenced by it, 



80 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

and adopted on December 19, 1827, a report gen- 
erally coinciding with Turnbull' s views, but an- 
nouncing them with less heat. It was, in fact, 
written by Turnbull although introduced by Dr. 
Kamsay. As to state sovereignty, the report said : 
" Each state having entered into the compact as a 
sovereign body, and not in conjunction with any 
other state, must judge for itself whether the compact 
has been broken." The Supreme Court, it declared, 
was not an impartial tribunal in questions affecting 
the sovereignty of the states. There was, moreover, 
a peculiar propriety in a state deciding when the 
Constitution should be violated in Us spirit and not 
in its letter, because in such a case no court could 
give relief. 

Turnbull had said as much in his articles, and the 
report also followed "The Crisis" in aiming a fierce 
blow at Congress for extending " its legislation to 
the means of ameliorating the condition of the free 
colored or slave population of the United States." 
This, it said, "is a subject in which there can be 
no reasoning between South Carolina and any other 
government. It is a cpiestion altogether of feeling." 
"It is a subject on which no citizen of South 
Carolina needs instruction— our common feeling 
inspires us all with a firm determination not to 
submit to a species of legislation, which would 
light up such fires of intestine commotion in our 
borders, as ultimately to consume our country." 
The matter was dismissed as one that ought not to 
be discussed. 



SOURCES OF CALHOUN DOCTRINE 81 

No one wrote extensively in favor of state sover- 
eignty who did not give as one reason for invoking 
it the danger to which the state would be exposed 
by national efforts at emancipation. When the 
tariff laws, which were supposed to injure its pros- 
perity, were most stubbornly resisted, there was 
always manifest a reserve determination of resisting 
anti-slavery legislation to the death, because it was 
believed that this would bring hideous ruin upon the 
people of South Carolina. 

After the doctrine of nullification became a mat- 
ter of universal discussion in South Carolina, stu- 
dents of precedent found a number of interest- 
ing cases in which it had been announced or 
practiced in other parts of the country :— in 1792, 
in the matter of the Supreme Court decision in the 
case of Chisholm versus Georgia, when the state of 
Georgia refused to obey the decree of the court, from 
which conflict resulted the constitutional amend- 
ment that the judicial power of the United States 
should not extend to any suit in law or equity 
against a state ; in 1809, when Judge C. J. Tilgh- 
man of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in the 
Olmstead case declared that when the general gov- 
ernment clearly exceeded its powers, the state courts 
could give redress ; in the same year, when the 
Massachusetts legislature declared the embargo acts 
" not legally binding on the citizens of this state"; 
in the same year in Connecticut, when the legisla- 
ture declared it could not give effect in that state to 
the embargo acts ; and in 1820 when the legislature 



82 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

of Ohio declared against the right of the Bank of 
the United States to do business in that common- 
wealth. ' 

The most important precursors of the nullifica- 
tion doctrine, however, were the Virginia and Ken- 
tucky Eesolutions of 1798-1799, and the Hartford Con- 
vention of 1814, the former being resolutions passed 
by the legislatures of the two states mentioned, and 
the latter a meeting of delegates whose election was 
provided for by the legislatures of Ehode Island, 
Connecticut and Massachusetts, while the people of 
two counties in New Hampshire and one in Vermont 
also sent delegates, although the legislatures of 
these states had not made provision for their doing 
so. 

The moving cause of the Virginia and Kentucky 
Eesolutions was the passage by Congress of two re- 
markable acts, one known as the Alien Law, ap- 
proved June 25, 1798, and the other known as the 
Sedition Law, approved three weeks later. The 
Alien Law gave the President power to order all 
aliens whom he might judge dangerous to the peace 
and safety of the United States, or might have 
reasonable grounds to suspect of treasonable or se- 
cret machinations against the government, to depart 
out of the territory of the United States within such 
time as he might name. If an alien, after being- 
ordered to leave, should be found at large in the limits 

1 Hampden (Crnger) in the Charleston Mercury in 1831. after- 
ward reprinted in The Genuine Book of Nullification, Charleston, 
1831. 



SOUECES OF CALHOUN DOCTEINE 83 

of the republic, he might be imprisoned for not 
more than three years and be forever barred from be- 
coming a citizen of the United States. This act con- 
ferred upon the President despotic power, which all 
Eepublicans believed was not contemplated by the 
Constitution and was repugnant to it. The Sedition 
Law provided for punishment by fine and imprison- 
ment of any one who should " write, print, utter or 
publish," anything false, scandalous and malicious 
against the government, either house of Congress, 
or the President. The act was broad enough to 
furnish the general government with complete power 
to muzzle the opposition and destroy that freedom 
of pen and speech which the Constitution specifically 
guaranteed. No popular demand had been made 
for the passage of these laws, and the policy which 
they involved had not the benefit of public dis- 
cussion. They came as a surprise, and Eepublicans 
believed they were only the first steps in a progress 
toward centralized power which would destroy the 
rights of the states and render nugatory the guaran- 
tees of the Constitution. 

Where was the opposition to turn for relief ? The 
Executive had cheerfully approved the bills and 
made them into law. There was open, perhaps, an 
appeal to the Supreme Court to declare the laws 
unconstitutional ; but would it have been wise to 
stake the question of final submission to such laws 
and the principle they involved upon the issue of a 
suit before the Supreme Court as it was then con- 
stituted? To judge the prestige of the court of 



84 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

1798 by our knowledge of the court for the past oue 
hundred years, is to fall into a fatal error ; for until 
John Marshall became Chief-Justice in 1801 and 
started it on its separate career, it was held in doubt- 
ful estimation, and neither deserved nor received 
non-partisan confidence where party questions were 
involved. When the Alien and Sedition Laws went 
into effect, Oliver Ellsworth was the Chief- Justice. 
He had been the leader of the Federalists in the 
Senate when appointed to the bench three years 
before. The Judges were James Iredell, who led 
the party in North Carolina ; Samuel Chase, of 
Maryland, who adhered to it openly, actively, even 
furiously, while still on the bench ; William Cush- 
ing, of Massachusetts, and William Paterson, of 
New Jersey, also Federalists. That the court had a 
right to declare an act of Congress not affecting the 
judiciary unconstitutional and consequently void 
was generally believed, but not yet finally deter- 
mined. That the court would never assert the right, 
if it could possibly avoid doing so, was well under- 
stood, and had been stated by Judges Iredell and 
Chase. The body was composed of shifting elements, 
and it was difficult to induce eminent lawyers to 
serve in it. It was a semi -political, wholly Fed- 
eralist body, the first Chief- Justice, Jay, acting as 
Secretary of State and Minister to England while he 
was on the bench, and his successor, Ellsworth, going 
out as Minister to France soon after his accession. 
It has been said that this was the time "when the 
politicians— or statesmen — of that day bivouacked 



SOURCES OF CALHOUN DOCTRINE 85 

in the chief-justiceship on their inarch from one 
political position to another." 1 Samuel Chase 
broke the quorum of the court in 1800, while he 
traveled about making political speeches. 

In 1817, soon after his retirement from the 
presidency, James Madison told William Lowndes, 
of South Carolina, that he had been more agreeably 
disappointed by the beneficial operation of that part 
of the Federal Constitution which related to the 
judiciary than by any other. 2 The development of 
the Supreme Court's functions and powers had come 
as a surprise to the father of the Constitution. 

Calhoun's opinion of the functions of the court 
was admirably put by him in a private letter of 
September 1, 1831 : 

"The question is in truth between the people and 
the Supreme Court. We contend, that the great 
constructive principle of our system is in the peo- 
ple of the states, and our opponents that it is in the 
Supreme Court. This is the sum total of the whole 
difference ; and I hold him a shallow statesman, 
who, after proper examination does not see, which 
is most in conformity to the genius of our system 
and the most effective and safe in its operation." 3 

On March 13, 1830, when he was a senator from 
Louisiana and an uncompromising opponent of the 
doctrine of nullification, Edward Livingston, in a 



1 John M. Shirley, quoted in Carson's Supreme Court of the 
United States, Vol. 1, p 192. 

2 Life of William Lowndes, by Mrs. Ravenel, p. 200. 

3 To Maxcy. Markoe Papers, Library of Congress MSS. 



86 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

speech on the "Foot Resolutions," enumerated five 
remedies open to a state, when it believed that a 
law was palpably unconstitutional, and after the 
Supreme Court had affirmed it. It might be met, 
he said, first, by remonstrating to Congress against 
it ; second, by an address to the people, urging them 
to instruct their representatives to have the law 
changed ; third, " by a similar address to the other 
states, in which they will have a right to declare 
that they consider the act as unconstitutional and 
therefore void ;" fourth, by proposing amendments 
to the Constitution; and fifth, by a resort to "the 
natural right which every people have to resist ex- 
treme oppression." It was the third of these rem- 
edies that Kentucky and Virginia invoked against 
the Alien and Sedition Laws, without waiting to 
have them affirmed by the Supreme Court, — an 
affirmation which there is no reason to doubt would 
have been given. The resolutions, written by Mad- 
ison and passed by the Virginia legislature, repeated 
the constitutional arguments against the laws which 
had been brought forward in the course of the de- 
bate in Congress, and, declaring them "palpable 
and alarming" infractions of the Constitution, ap- 
pealed to like dispositions in other states for similar 
declarations. The pith of the Virginia doctrine was 
contained in the third resolution : — "In case of a de- 
liberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other 
powers not granted by the said compact [the Con- 
stitution], the states, who are parties thereto, have 
the right and are in duty bound to interpose for ar- 



SOURCES OF CALHOUN DOCTRINE 87 

resting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining 
within their respective limits the authorities, rights, 
and liberties appertaining to them." 

The New England states and New York and Dela- 
ware having replied in dissent, the Virginia legisla- 
ture in the following year, adopted an explanatory 
report which was also written by Madison. It set 
forth that the resolutions had reference to " those 
great and extraordinary cases in which all the forms 
of the Constitution may prove ineffectual against in- 
fractions dangerous to the essential rights of the 
parties to it," and insisted that, without some rem- 
edy, the subversion of the government became com- 
plete, when the judiciary concurred in an unconsti- 
tutional act. It is hard to find good reasons, under 
the circumstances, for taking exception to these 
resolutions and the report ; and their author and the 
few of his contemporaries who were surviving when 
the nullification movement appeared, protested vig- 
orously against the attempt to fasten the nullifica- 
tion doctrine upon them as a legitimate outgrowth. 

They also protested against a similar attempt in 
the case of the resolutions of the legislature of 
Kentucky, adopted a few weeks before the Virginia 
Resolutions and supplemented the following year by 
explanatory resolutions. They were written by 
Thomas Jefferson, amended by John Breckinridge, 
and one of their youthful supporters was Henry 
Clay. 1 Following the same line of thought as the 

1 Warfield, Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, p. 43 ; also Works of 
Henry Clay, Vol. 401. 



88 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

Virginia Resolutions, they Mere, however, more 
radical, for they declared "that the several states 
who formed that instrument [the Constitution], be- 
ing - sovereign and independent, have the unques- 
tionable right to judge of its infraction ; and that a 
nullification by those sovereignties of all unauthor- 
ized acts done under color of that instrument, is the 
rightful remedy." Here was the use of the dread 
word ; but if what was meant was that the states 
had a right to declare an obnoxious law unconstitu- 
tional, mill, void and of no effect, Kentucky said 
only what Virginia had said. If, on the other hand, 
what was meant was that a state — one state — might 
nullify an obnoxious Federal law within its borders, 
then Kentucky was the parent soil of the nullifica- 
tion doctrine of South Carolina. 

Both the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions con- 
tained strong professions of devotion to the Union, 
and no threats of withdrawal from it, and were at 
most mere tentative manifestoes, neither calling for 
nor contemplating immediate action. Whether or 
not the Alien and Sedition Laws which drew them 
forth were palpable violations of the Constitution 
may admit of doubt ; ' there can be no doubt, how- 

] The Supreme Court in 1892 confirmed the constitutionality 
of the Chinese deportation acts and the decision can he taken 
inferentially as supporting the alien act of 1798. The decision 
was by a hare majority, the Chief-Justice and two Associate- 
Justices dissenting, while another Associate- Justice was abroad 
and did not participate in the case. Mr. Justice Field said in 
his dissent that it was beyond dispute that the alien law of 1798 
had ever since its passage "been the subject of universal con- 
demnation." See U. S. Reports, 149, p. 698, et seq. 



SOURCES OF CALHOUN DOCTRINE 89 

ever, that they were tyrannical and unjust, and or- 
dinary constitutional methods being insufficient to 
protect the people from them, to propose extraordi- 
nary action by the parties to the Constitution was 
not improper. Although John Adams approved 
the Alien Law, he never put it into effect ; but, under 
the Sedition Law, at least five persons were con- 
victed, fined, and cast into jail like common 
felons, among them Dr. Thomas Cooper. The par- 
tisan writings whereon this action was founded, 
were neither scurrilous nor vituperative, and 
did not differ in tone from political utterances in 
times of bitter partisan warfare which now go un- 
noticed. 

The old Federalist party went down in defeat, 
torn asunder by contending factious and loaded 
with the odium of the Alien and Sedition Laws ; 
and no party or faction has ever -dared to revive the 
policy which those laws represented. The men 
who were responsible for them were cast in a con- 
servative mold, were for the most part of superior 
education and social position, and were fatally 
trammeled by their ancestral English traditions. 
As the measures which they had passed when they 
held control of the government caused opposition 
that took the form of the radical suggestions of 
Virginia and Kentucky, so in their turn they were 
roused to extraordinary action fourteen years later 
by their opponents' policy. The acquisition of Lou- 
isiana and the admission into the Union of several 
agricultural slaveholding states left the commer- 



90 JOHN C. CALHOUN" 

cial states of the North at the South' s mercy, and 
the Hartford Convention expressed the opinion that 
it was unconstitutional to admit new slates into the 
Union. Unconstitutional also, it said, was the em- 
bargo against commerce, which was destructive of 
New England's chief source of wealth. So was the 
call of the President upon the governors of the 
states for troops to serve under Federal officers. 
In the long report which the convention gave 
to the world, these and lesser grievances were 
elaborately set forth. On the subject of separation 
from the Union, the report said that this was not 
the proper time for it. It might be, it went on, 
that existing evils would become permanent, and if 
so " a separation, by equitable arrangement, will be 
preferable to an alliance by constraint, among 
nominal friends, but real enemies." u But a 
severance of the Union by one or more states, 
against the will of the rest, and especially in a time 
of war, can be justified only by necessity." "That 
acts of Congress in violation of the Constitution are 
absolutely void, is an undeniable position. It does 
not, however, consist with respect and forbearance 
due from a confederate state toward the general 
government, to fly to open resistance upon every in- 
fraction of the Constitution, affecting the sover- 
eignty of a state, and liberties of the people ; it is 
not only the right but the duty of such a state to in- 
terpose its authority for their protection in the man- 
ner best calculated to secure that end. When emer- 
gencies occur which are beyond the reach of the 



SOUKCES OF CALHOUN DOCTRINE 91 

judicial tribunals, or too pressing to admit of the 
delay incident to their forms, states which have no 
common umpire, must be their own judges, and 
execute their own decisions." The last two 
sentences were an adaptation from the Virginia 
Resolutions, with the idea of interposition by a 
single state definitely substituted for that of concur- 
rent interposition by several states. 

The report of the convention represented the 
extreme of moderation felt by the members, 
and the calm discussion of secession was credit- 
able, when it is remembered that it had been 
seriously considered by leading New England Fed- 
eralists for ten years before the convention was 
called. They felt themselves bound to the Union 
by a slender thread, and showed that they were 
not unwilling to break it if uncomfortably pressed. 
In 1798 the Republicans were opposed to the 
threatened war with France. If it had been de- 
clared and especial hardships had in consequence 
fallen upon the Republican states, their loyalty to 
the Union would have been tested as the loyalty 
of the New England states was tested by the war 
with England, and would probably have stood the 
strain no better. 

Calhoun declared, after he had become the 
putative father of the nullification theory, that it 
was regarded as a new and strange doctrine ; but 
that he had not gone an inch beyond the Virginia 
and Kentucky Resolutions. The nullification 
theory was a development, coming from, the brains 



92 JOHN 0. CALHOUN 

of men who were seeking a way to avoid laws which 
t lay did not like, and was built upon precedents which 
were susceptible of being made a foundation for it. 
Many people in South Carolina had been discussing 
it for years and understood it fairly well when they 
were opposed to it. In his speech on the Force Bill 
in 1832, Calhoun said that after the tariff began to 
weigh heavily on the people of his state, they 
started to look into the reserved powers of the 
states under the Constitution to see if they could 
not find relief there. He also said that whenever a 
law was proposed, the first question should be, Is 
it constitutional ? And the second, Is it expedient? 
But the opposite method of reasoning had prevailed 
in South Carolina, as it always has prevailed else- 
where ; and if the law is expedient, the powers 
granted by the Constitution to the general govern- 
ment are examined with a view to finding them 
sufficient. 

Calhoun's Exposition went beyond Kentucky's 
Eesolutions, because it accepted as certain the 
doubtful point as to whether or not they ever con- 
templated interposition by a single state ; and with 
the Virginia Resolutions it really had nothing in 
common. We have seen that Grimke invoked the 
Virginia plan in his efforts to save the state from 
nullification, and that Edward Livingston, who was 
soon to write Jackson's proclamation against nulli- 
fication, pointed to the Virginia plan as a proper 
mode of meeting unconstitutional acts of Congress ; 
but the doctrine of nullification assuredly did not 



SOURCES OF CALHOUN DOCTRINE 93 

go far beyond the pronouncement of the Hartford 
Convention. 

It is time, now, to consider what this doctrine, as 
Calhoun developed it, really was. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE CALHOUN DOCTRINE 

About 1843, fifteen years after the Exposition 
had appeared, Calhoun began to write out in final 
form his views on government in general, and, 
workiug at it intermittently, he finished the essay 
to his satisfaction in five years' time. He called 
it A Disquisition on Government. He also prepared 
A Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the 
United States, but this essay was still without the 
finishing polish when he died. The two essays to- 
gether constitute the elaboration of the doctrine 
which he began to preach in 1828, but do not differ 
from it. He never faltered after writing the Exposi- 
tion, and every act and thought of his public life 
had as its one great aim the inculcation of the faith 
which was in him. 

How did it happen that this former advocate of . 
a strong centralized government had now become a 
believer iu state sovereignty? As long as he saw 
his state profiting by national laws he did not 
fear them, and had no reason to question the 
right to make them. But when he perceived his 
state suffering because of these laws, lie began to 
inquire into the power of the national government 
to enact them, and from this inquiry resulted his 



THE CALHOUN DOCTRINE 95 

espousal of a new creed. He himself gave this ex- 
planation of his course and there is no reason to doubt 
that it is correct. Circumstances influenced his be- 
lief, as they have influenced the beliefs of all 
political leaders of all times. 

The key-note to the Disquisition on Government 
is that government simply of the majority always 
results iu despotism over the minority, unless each 
class or community in the state has a check upon 
the acts of the majority, so that all acts of govern- 
ment shall be concurred in by all classes and in- 
terests. Government with such concurrence he 
called government by the concurrent majority. As 
an extreme instance of it, he cited the case of 
Poland, where the election of the Kings was re- 
quired to be by the unanimous vote of the nobles and 
gentry present in an assemblage usually numbering 
from one hundred and fifty to two hundred thou- 
sand, and where every measure of government must 
be approved by every member of the Diet. This 
strange system lasted in form for two centuries. He 
also instanced the Roman republic, where the 
tribunate had the right to veto the passage of all 
laws and prevent their execution ; and so well did 
the system work that the proudest title in the world 
was that of Roman citizenship. The Disquisition 
is a model of severely close and accurate reasoning, 
built up flawlessly from the premise that our indi- 
vidual are stronger than our social feelings, since 
self-preservation is a fundamental law of nature. 
Those who administer government have, conse- 



96 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

queutly, a natural tendency to use their power to 
their own advantage and to the oppression of oth- 
ers ; and the problem of government is to devise 
means to counteract this peril and construct 
"such an organism as will furnish the ruled with 
the means of resisting this tendency on the part of 
the rulers to oppression and abuse. ' ' 
/ The generalizations of the Disquisition on Govern- 
ment Calhoun made immediately applicable in his 
Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the 
United States. "Ours," it says, "is a democratic 
federal republic," — democratic, because the people 
are the source of all power, — federal, because it is 
"the government of a community of states, and 
not the government of a single state or nation." 
Under the Constitution the states should be as free, 
independent and sovereign, as they were under the 
Articles of Confederation. If the Constitution in- 
tended otherwise, then the convention framing it 
practiced deliberate deception by employing mis- 
leading phraseology. Geographically it was cor- 
rect to speak of our continent as the United States ; 
but politically the continent was composed of sep- 
arate states not constituting a nation, and it was in- 
correct to speak of the " national government." The 
Constitution was established by the states and for the \f 
states, but not over the states. The object sought 
was to secure a more perfect and stronger union 
than existed under the old government ; not com- 
pletely to destroy that union and put in its place 
something stronger, than the states creating it. 



THE CALHOUN DOCTRINE 97 

It was nonsense to say that the states were federal 
as to the reserved powers of the Constitution and 
national as to the delegated powers. The term 
" delegated" was sufficient proof of this, for it 
meant that the powers were given in trust for the 
states, the parties to the Constitution. "Sover- 
eignty is an entire thing ; to divide it is to des- 
troy it." 

Before the Eevolution the Colonies had been en- 
tirely separate one from another, and when they 
threw off the British yoke they became independent 
sovereignties. For their mutual benefit they en- 
tered into a limited uuion for certain specified pur- 
poses, and when this proved ineffective they 
determined upon a change. "To dissolve the 
union was too abhorrent to be named ; " "but if dis- 
union was out of the question, consolidation was 
not less repugnant to their feelings and opinious." 
There had, however, been a contest between state 
forces and consolidation forces as soon as the Con- 
stitution was formed, and the latter had gained as- 
cendency through the "federal majority," — that is, 
by a majority in a majority of the states, — and 
power had become centred in one section of the 
country. Oppression had resulted. ,It could not 
be counteracted by resolutions, remonstrances 
against laws as unconstitutional, addresses to co- 
states calling on them to cooperate in opposition, or 
instructions to senators and requests to represent- 
atives. All these were impotent to check the en- 
croachments of the general government upon the 



98 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

reserved powers of the states. The only remedy 
was to be found in an absolute negative on Fed- 
eral measures by eaeb state. 

The states must be the judges of their own 
powers; the Federal government could not judge 
their powers for them. If they were equal sover- 
eigns, how could one judge for the other? The 
real seat of sovereignty was in the people of the 
several states. ' The Constitution was the supreme 
law over individuals, and they might be guilty of 
violating it ; but between the states it was merely a 
compact and a state could violate it only as a coin- 
paet — that is, an agreement between parties. Each 
state had established the Constitution over its citi- 
zens and commanded them to obey it. 

When the Federal government committed an act 
not warranted by the Constitution, each state, being 
sovereign and a party to the compact, had a right 
to declare the act void. This right was one of great 
responsibility, and must not be exercised except in 
ease of a violation not only palpable but highly 
dangerous. Then it became a duty which a state 
owed not merely to itself but to the Union. It was 
the only effective security against a violation of the 
compact by the United States government. It 
might be said that the states would be apt to abuse 
their right of interposition. Would their regard 
for prudence and propriety be a security against 
such abuses ? No ; but fear of political consequences 
would ; for a majority party in a state would hesi- 
tate to take action involving the risk of incurring 



THE CALHOUN DOCTRINE 99 

odium in the country at large, and the resultant 
danger of losing popular support at home and of 
being turned out of office. If the exercise of the 
power of negative by a state would cause derange- 
ments and disorders, a remedy would be found in 
the right of amending the Constitution. 

If a conflict of opinion arose as to an act, the state 
arresting its operations within its borders must be 
presumed to be right, because the powers of the 
general government are strictly defined and those 
of the states embrace the whole mass of other pow- 
ers. It was the general government, therefore, 
which must prove its right in case of a conflict. If 
it were not so, the Federal government could usurp 
power as far as it chose. But if the Federal govern- 
ment took an appeal and a constitutional amend- 
ment was carried against an opposing state, the 
state must acquiesce and the obnoxious act must be- 
come operative within its borders, unless the act 
transcended the limits of the amending power and 
was inconsistent with the character of the Constitu- 
tion, in which case it would not be bound to 
acquiesce, but might choose the alternative of seces- 
sion from the Union. If the state did acquiesce, it 
would be necessary for it to rescind the state law 
which declared the Federal law unconstitutional ; 
until it did so, the state act would be binding upon 
its citizens. 

As for the Supreme Court, it was never intended 
that it should have the power to review a decision 
of a state court in cases involving construction of 



100 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

the Constitution, and the judiciary act of 1789 
granting it such authority was unconstitutional. A 
state court had as much right to review a decision 
of the Supreme Court. Each was supreme in its 
sphere and coequal and coordinate. The judges of 
the Federal Supreme Court would always have a 
tendency to decide a case so as to please the majority 
in power. Some of them would be ambitious to 
succeed to the presidency ; they would stand in fear 
of the power of impeachment ; vacancies in the 
court would be filled by judges with opinions known 
to coincide with those of the ruling party. There- 
fore reliance on the judiciary in case of oppression 
must prove illusive. The state judges were sworn 
to support the Constitution of the United States, 
and could be better trusted to observe its terms, than 
could the Federal judges be trusted to guard the 
reserved powers of the states, since they were not 
sworn to support the state constitutions. Under 
any circumstances, if an act was constitutional, the 
court could not enquire into its unconstitutional ob- 
jects. 

The foundation for the departures from the true 
intent of the Constitution had been laid in the First 
Congress, when measures were passed designed to 
change the government from a Federal to a national 
one. Later the culmination was reached in the pas- 
sage of the Alien and Sedition Laws, which pro- 
voked the action of Kentucky and Virginia against 
them. That action was sound, and upon the prin- 
ciples then announced Jefferson rode into power, 






THE CALHOUN DOCTRINE 101 

and much had been expected of him ; " but he did 
nothing to arrest many great and radical evils ; 
nothing toward elevating the judicial departments of 
the governments of the several states, from a state 
of subordination to the judicial department of the 
government of the United States, to their rightful, 
constitutional position, as coordinate ; nothing to- 
ward maintaining the rights of the states as parties 
to the constitutional compact, to judge, in the last 
resort, as to the extent of the delegated powers ; 
nothing toward restoring to Congress the exclusive 
right to adopt measures necessary and proper to 
carry into execution its own, as well as all the pow- 
ers vested in the government, or in any of its de- 
partments ; nothing toward reversing the order of 
General Hamilton, which united the government 
with the banks ; and nothing effectual toward re- 
stricting the money power to objects specifically 
enumerated and delegated by the Constitution." 
The reasons why Jefferson had done none of these 
things were that many of Hamilton's measures had 
been so skilfully planted that they could not be up- 
rooted in a given time, and that the attention of the 
people during Jefferson's administration had been 
chiefly centred on our foreign relations. Later the 
country was at war, a condition naturally calculated 
to increase a national feeling. The war legislation 
diverted capital into manufactures, whence resulted 
the pressure for a protective tariff. Following the 
destruction of the old Federalist party, there came 
a realignment of all parties. The State Eights party 



V 



102 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

became the Democratic ; the Federalist, the national 
Republican, and the Democratic party had less de- 
votion to the reserved powers of the Constitution 
than the old Republican party. Then the tariff law 
of 1828, "the Bill of Abominations," as it was ap- 
propriately called, was passed by both parties ; so 
was the act of March 3, 1833, subjecting the judi- 
cial authority of the states to the Federal judiciary. 

A consequence of the increase of power of the 
Federal government was a keener competition to 
obtain the presidency, whence party conventions, 
party organization and removals from office for party 
reasons. Another consequence was an arousing of 
the anti-slavery sentiment into activity, because it 
was now believed that the general government had 
power over slavery. 

The tendency toward consolidation would result 
in one of two things — monarchy or disunion — and 
"these sad alternatives " would be averted only by 
restoring the government to the condition in which 
it came from the hands of those who framed it. The 
states must be restored to their supremacy OA^er the 
Federal government ; the twenty-fifth section of the 
judiciary act must be repealed ; so must the whole 
of the act of March 3, 1833. 

Such, briefly, was John C. Calhoun's idea of our 
government. At the time he wrote perhaps the 
strongest argument against him was the irresistible 
argument of precedent ; but, while he himself, in 
the earlier part of his career, had brought this argu- 
ment forward in support of the measures which he 



THE CALHOUN DOCTEINE 103 

had advocated, he now abhorred it as a method of 
reasoning, and insisted that the Constitution must 
be submitted to a process of original analysis im- 
possible for the common mind to grasp. If, as he 
said, the country had accepted the nationalizing 
acts of the First Congress ; if Jefferson with his 
mighty hosts had drifted with the current which had 
set toward nationalism ; if a pure state sovereignty 
party, never having been wholly in the ascendency, 
had almost disappeared, how could Calhoun and a 
majority in one state, or even one section of the coun- 
try, hope to stem the tide ? He wished to turn the gov- 
ernment back — to what ? To a position which he 
confessed it had never occupied ! If it had been in 
a wrong j)Osition so long and so persistently, was it 
not plain that the people intended to keep it there ? 

Calhoun's theory is not difficult to understand, 
when the fact is grasped that it was based on the 
theory of the absolute sovereignty of the states over 
the Constitution ; for then it is plain that they can 
do with it as they please. In its development, he 
resorted to elaborate, ingenious and tortuous reason- 
ing of a kind which attracts certain minds, numerous 
enough, but peculiar and separate from the ordinary 
mass of mankind. 

People of average intelligence knew that Calhoun's 
Constitution was not the charter of government un- 
der which they lived. If his interpretation was 
correct, those who framed the Constitution and 
those who had been interpreting and administering 
it for forty years had either stupidly not understood 



104 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

it, or had wickedly suppressed its true meauiug. 
That the states, having voluntarily accepted the 
Constitution, had a right to undo their action and 
withdraw from the Union, was believed by many in 
the North as well as in the (South ; but that a state 
might remain in for some purposes and go out for 
others, was not believed by any party. The Ken- 
tucky Resolutions suggested a means of meeting 
rank, unbearable tyranny and oppression, when it 
was sanctioned by all the branches of the Federal 
government ; but Calhoun proposed that there 
should be general anarchy whenever a state willed 
it. His historical treatment of the Constitution 
was unsound, for in the convention which framed it, 
the national party had a considerable majority over 
the state sovereignty party, and the compromise by 
which the states were given equal representation in 
the Senate was acceded to by the majority, merely 
to keep several small states from withdrawing from 
the convention and consequently wrecking it. The 
question having been left unsettled by the con- 
vention, which party would be the more likely to 
prevail afterward, — the smaller or the larger? 
Broadly speaking, all the statesmen who favored a 
national government also favored the ratification of 
the Constitution, and the opposition to ratification 
came entirely from those who opposed a national 
government. 

But there was a strange contradiction in Calhoun's 
altitude. He spoke of disunion as an abhorrent 
thing ; he showed that he felt for the Union a deep 



THE CALHOUN DOCTRINE 105 

affection and pride, yet he argued that it was 
subordinate to any state's whim, and he pointed 
out the way to bring its laws into disrespect by mak- 
ing them inoperative. 

From the beginning to the end of the Eevolntion, 
there was a strong Union sentiment throughout the 
United States, and, generally speaking, the leaders 
of thought felt it and encouraged it. It was probably 
the dominant feeling ; but after the peace, the chief 
interest of the people drifted back to the several 
states from which it had been withdrawn temporarily 
by the united struggle; and during the "critical 
period" intervening before the adoption of the 
Constitution, events were rapidly shaping toward 
a dissolution of the flimsy Union. It required 
Herculean effort on the part of the statesmen who 
realized the consequences which would follow dis- 
solution, to save the Union, but the rescue was made 
and the Constitution was ratified. Those who ef- 
fected the ratification were firmly convinced that 
many of the leaders of the forces opposed to it were 
in favor of splitting the country into a number 
of separate sovereignties. When the government 
under the Constitution started to operate, it was 
watched on all sides with intense suspicion. The 
North and South locked horns over the question of 
the location of the capital, and the new govern- 
ment almost went to pieces ; while in the ensuing 
ten years, the policy of the ruling party produced 
in the South many suggestions of withdrawal from 
the Union. When the control of the government 






106 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

passed to that section, the centre of disunion senti- 
ment shifted to New England. That a genuine 
national feeling, extending throughout the land, 
should be a plant which must grow was only natural. 
The people for the most part were agriculturists and 
bound closely to their homes. The roads were bad 
or non-existent, and few persons traveled or knew 
those who did not live near them. Most men re- 
sided in the states in which they were born ; they 
married women from the same states, and their 
children went to local schools and colleges. The 
mental habits of colonials clung to them ; they took 
an interest in European affairs, and the chief fea- 
ture of their newspapers was letters from the Old 
World. The correspondence of even the public 
men shows that the intimate exchange of thought 
was between those living in the same state or sec- 
tion. When New England opposed the acquisition 
of Louisiana, it was avowedly because the new and 
fertile region would develop into states, which ^ 
would rival the Eastern states and diminish their 
importance. Men holding such views did not 
pretend that the expansion of the nation was their 
aspiration. 

After the War of 1812, the whole country became 
prosperous, and the Union took a stronger hold 
upon the affections of all geographical groups than 
it had ever had before ; but it was an affection 
which was disturbed as soon as one section thought 
another was advancing at its expense. 

In a broad way, the truism which Calhoun wrote 






THE CALHOUN DOCTRINE 107 

in his Disquisition on Government was applicable to 
sections or states as well as to individuals : " Each, 
in consequence, has a greater regard for his own 
safety or happiness, than for the safety or happiness 
of others ; and, where these would come in opposi- 
tion, is ready to sacrifice the interests of others to 
his own." 



CHAPTER VIII 

CALHOUN'S OPPONENTS 

The committee which brought iu Calhoun's Ex- 
position of lS^S, consisted of seven members, at 
least one of whom, Hugh S. Legare, did not agree 
with the views that the report set forth. The draft 
prepared by Calhoun underwent slight modifica- 
tion by the committee. The legislature, know- 
ing that it had been drawn up by the Vice-Presi- 
dent of the United States, received it with great re- 
spect and ordered five thousand copies printed, but 
they did not adopt it. We have Dr. Cooper's au- 
thority for the statement that they thought it con- 
tained tenets to which they ought not to commit 
themselves. Some of the members doubtless knew 
in advance that the report would proclaim the 
right of state veto of a Federal law and were 
ready and willing to accept the dogma ; others were 
determined never to accept it ; still others desired 
time in which to consider it. The strict state rights 
men whose views accorded with kludge William 
Smith's had not learned this doctrine ; those who 
agreed with Turnbull's Crisis had prepared them- 
selves for resistance of a different kind ; those who 
in the past had been following Calhoun and his 
baud, found themselves in the distressing situation 



CALHOUN'S OPPONENTS 109 

of men who must change their minds or their lead- 
ers. Stephen D. Miller, the new governor, who 
took the oath of office soon after the Exposition had 
been received, said in his inaugural address : "In 
swearing to support the Constitution of the United 
States, I do not regard myself as acknowledging 
allegiance to an unconstitutional act of Congress." 
Nevertheless, the situation was encouraging to the 
Union party, for it was generally agreed by all that 
they would wait and see what relief the future 
might offer. 

Calhoun looked before him with little hope. The 
vote in Congress for the tariff of 1828 had shown 
that many Jackson men were also tariff men ; but as 
South Carolina had already resolved to support 
Jackson and had nothing to hope from Adams, the 
outward appearance of expecting something from 
the new administration was observed, and the same 
legislature which received the Exposition, selected 
presidential electors who were to cast their votes 
for Jackson and Calhoun. Calhoun's election had 
been resolved upon by the Jackson states before the 
nullification incident arose, and was accomplished 
without reference to it ; but when he took the oath 
of office on March 4, 1829, it was well known that 
he was the author of the Exposition. The point to 
which he had directed the hopes of his followers 
was that Jackson might appoint a low-tariff Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, but he selected Samuel D. Ing- 
ham of Pennsylvania. He was the same man that 
had put Calhoun in nomination for the presidency 



\J 



110 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

in 1821, and they were still warm friends, but Ing- 
ham was, of course, a protectionist. Calhoun's 
chief fear was that the large revenues pro- 
duced by the tariff would cause a surplus, 
which alter the public debt had been wiped out, 
would be distributed among the several states. 
They would then have a pecuniary interest in con- 
tinuing a high tariff, and would not feel disposed to 
adopt measures against it. Action must, therefore, 
be taken before the debt should be paid. 

In his hist annual message to Congress in Decem- 
ber, 1829, Jackson recommended the distribution. 
It had already been made manifest that his admin- 
istration was not inimical to a protective tariff. It 
was inevitable, therefore, that Calhouu and Jackson 
must become political opponents. Their relations 
up to this time had been exceptionally friendly ; 
but on Jackson's part the relationship had been 
based upon a misunderstanding, for he believed that 
Calhoun had been his champion in Monroe's cabi- 
net in 1818, when his conduct of the Seminole cam- 
paign was under discussion. The reverse was the 
truth, for Jackson had disobeyed orders, and Cal- 
houn, being the Secretary of War, had urged that 
he be court-martialed. When the charges were be- 
ing investigated by Congress, Jackson, on his way 
to the capital, had offered as a toast at a public din- 
ner, given iu his honor at Winchester, Va. : " John 
C. Calhoun, — an honest man is the noblest work of 
Cod." While in Washington, Calhoun's was the 
only house at which Jackson consented to be enter- 



CALHOUN'S OPPONENTS 111 

tamed. As Calhoun had afterward helped to elect 
him to the presidency, it might be supposed that 
the former would be a promising candidate in 1832, 
for it was believed that Jackson would cousent to 
serve for ouly oue term. 

It was generally recognized that Calhoun was the 
first statesman in the Democratic party and that he 
had a greater claim upon the succession than any 
one else ; but he had a rival from the very begin- 
niug in Martin Van Buren, who had shown remark- 
able talent in the manipulation of forces to secure 
Jackson's election. In advising with the new 
President before he organized his administration, 
Calhoun recommended Tazewell, of Virginia, for 
Secretary of State, and opposed Van Buren ; but 
Jackson insisted on appointing the latter, although 
Ingham, Branch, of North Carolina and Berrien, of 
Georgia, were supposed to be friends of Calhoun, 
and the President himself promised to take no sides 
in the expected contest. 

In this contest Calhoun would succeed if the 
South accepted the views embodied in the Exjwsi- 
tion of 1828. Strangely enough, he believed that bis 
section would rally to the nullification standard and 
around him. On the contrary, the South regarded 
the Exposition with wonder and surprise, not un- 
mixed with aversion, and looked coldly upon its 
author. The administration formed its policy with- 
out consulting him. It was plain that South Carolina 
was going to try a fall with the national government, 
and that no state was preparing to help her. As 



112 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

the state was isolated, so was Calhoun, and any one 
could have seen that he could not possibly be Jack- 
son's successor; but the intimate Mends of the 
President, who surrounded him and used him, were 
not quick to recognize the natural course of events 
or trust to it, preferring petty intrigues and med- 
dlesome activities which were often wholly un- 
necessary to the accomplishment of their own objects. 
One of their objects at the beginning of the Jack- 
son administration was to put Calhoun out of the 
way of the succession ; for they hated him, know- 
ing that they would have short lease of life if he 
came to power. They favored Van Buren, one of 
themselves, so they hatched a plot against Calhoun 
as despicable as it was unnecessary. Van Buren 
himself was studiously ignorant of it, giving his 
companions to understand that they must not tell 
him of their plans. Circumstances favored the un- 
dertaking, for immediately after the inauguration a 
coolness arose between the President and the Vice- 
President, because Mrs. Calhoun would not receive 
Mrs. Eaton, the wife of the Secretary of War. The 
Calhouns, however, merely took the same stand as 
the rest of Washington society, who, to a woman, 
refused to associate with the notorious Peggy 
O'Neil. This incident by itself would have passed 
and been forgotten, for Jackson finally gave up the 
fight for Mrs. Eaton. But while he was still vexed 
with Calhoun because of his wife's behavior, John 
Forsyth of Georgia, at the request of Major William 
B. Lewis, premier of Jackson's " Kitchen Cabinet," 



CALHOUN'S OPPONENTS 113 

put in the President's hands a letter from William 
H. Crawford, revealing the fact that in 181 S in the 
cabinet councils, when Jackson supposed Calhoun 
was acting as his defender from attack, the latter 
was really trying to have him punished for dis- 
obedience of orders. When the old man learned 
that for all these years he had been giving his 
friendship to one who was in reality his opponent, 
his wrath was kindled at once. He sent Calhoun a 
stiff note, enclosing Crawford's letter to Forsyth 
and asking if the statements it contained were true. 
The Vice-President replied laboriously and at 
length. He took the defensive and laid stress upon 
Crawford's perfidy in disclosing the secrets of the 
cabinet, but he was obviously ill at ease at the 
thought of losing Jackson's friendship ; nor could 
any arguments, however ingenious or however long, 
explain away the fact that he had Avished to punish 
Jackson. Calhoun spent a great deal of time over 
his part of the correspondence, and the controversy 
excited much discussion between his and Jackson's 
friends. The surviving literature being extensive, 
historians have given more importance to the inci- 
dent than it deserves. Calhoun bitterly resented 
Jackson's charges and hated him and the clique 
which surrounded him. The plot had succeeded 
admirably. Jackson was now Calhoun's relentless 
personal enemy, and the President's friends were no 
longer the Vice-President's friends. For the time 
being national political life offered him no pros- 
pects. 



114 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

Nor were affairs at home in a wholly satisfac- 
tory train, for the Union party was organizing 
and showing increased strength. Greenville, in the 
mountains on the North Carolina border, was one 
centre for it ; the democratic farmers of the interior 
were generally Unionists. Charleston was another 
centre, and probably a majority of the aristocratic 
families with large connections and extended in- 
fluence were on the Union side. In September, 
1827, a newspaper article declared that the state as 
a whole was perfectly loyal, with the exception of a 
baud of infuriated zealots who wanted to fight. 
We have seeu that when the first Missouri bill was 
brought forward in 1819 and there was some talk of 
Southern secession, Calhoun told John Quincy 
Adams that if the South did secede it would form 
an alliance with England. The Unionists now 
charged that such an alliance was being talked of 
by their enemies, as England would be the state's 
natural ally and there would then be nothing to fear 
from the North. This charge was frequently made 
and was probably based on the facts. 

Some of the Unionists whose influence was mak- 
ing itself strongly felt were Judge Daniel E. Huger, 
afterward United States senator from 1843 to 1845 ; 
James E. Erwin, a leader of the bar in the Marion 
district ; "Robert Cunningham, another great lawyer, 
who had read law in Calhoun's office ; B. F. Perry, 
editor of the Greenville Mountaineer, afterward 
governor of the state ; and John M. Felder, of 
Orangeburg, Calhoun's most intimate friend at 



CALHOUN'S OPPONENTS 115 

Yale and at the law-school. William Johnson, 
Judge of the United States Supreme Court, whom 
Jefferson had selected because he was a more strict 
Eepublican than Theodore Gaillard, who had a 
higher standing at the bar, being deterred by his 
judicial position from entering into a political con- 
test, refused to return to South Carolina, and died 
in Brooklyn in 1834. In 1829 Joel E. Poinsett 
came back from his mission to Mexico and was ac- 
cepted as the active leader of the Union party. 

The most conclusive argument against Cal- 
houn's doctrine of government came from a man 
who, by origin, birth, education and association 
was as much of a Carolinian as Calhoun himself, 
and as true an exponent of Carolina thought. James 
Louis Petigru was born in the Abbeville district, 
only a few miles from Calhoun's birthplace and only 
seven years after Calhoun. 1 Both came from the 
farmer class, the least distinctive in the state, but 
Petigru was half Huguenot and half Scotch-Irish, 
while Calhoun had no French blood. Like Cal- 
houn Petigru received his intermediate education at 
Williston from Dr. Waddell, but he was too poor to 
go to a Northern college and matriculated at the 
head of his class in the South Carolina College, at 
Columbia. He studied law at home also, but while 
Calhoun disliked the profession and abandoned its 
practice as soon as he could, Petigru loved it and 
devoted his life to it. The two were as unlike as 

1 See James Louis Petigru, a Biograjihical Sketch, by William J. 
Grayson. 



116 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

men could be. Petigru was a man of heavy, mass- 
ive person, with a huge head, big features, a com- 
plexion swarthy as an Indian's, and an Indian's 
straight, black hair. He had strong sentiments, an 
irrepressible imagination and an exuberant sense of 
humor. His temper was quick and violent, and 
before the days of nullification, he thrashed a man 
who dared to call him a Federalist. He read and 
wrote poetry and one of his favorite authors was 
Eabelais. He lay in wait for jokes, and accounted 
it an achievement when he made a good one. He 
loved flowers and trees, and back of his office in 
St. Michael's Alley, in Charleston, was his beauti- 
ful garden, where he used to sit and study his law 
cases. This man, who had received his whole edu- 
cation in his native state, who had never held a 
national office, whose every interest, professional, 
material and social, centred in South Carolina, and 
who yielded to none in his devotion to her, had, 
nevertheless, imbibed a patriotism broader than his 
state could satisfy, and was one of a large class of 
Carolinians who looked with grave apprehension 
upon the growing spirit of disunion. The substitute 
for it which Calhoun offered they regarded with re- 
pugnance and contempt, and they were extremely 
proud of the record of the state, which had been so 
notable in making the Union strong. 

In the constitutional convention, South Carolina 
had been represented by Federalists. Charles 
Pinckney made the motion in that body "that the 
national legislature should have the authority to 



CALHOUN'S OPPONENTS 117 

negative all [state] laws which they should judge to 
be improper.'' "The states," he said, "must be 
kept in due subordination to the nation." John 
Butledge moved the clause making the Constitution 
" the supreme law of the several states aud of their 
citizens and inhabitants," and Pierce Butler and 
General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, the other 
delegates from South Carolina, were in full accord 
with the Federalist understanding of the Constitu- 
tion. In no state was there less opposition to its 
ratification ; and in the First Congress all of the 
delegation with the exception of ^Edanus Burke 
were Federalists. 

Two members even voted for the Alien bill in 
1798, and only when the Federalists became the 
sectional party did South Carolina become a Re- 
publican state. In 1821 when Ohio passed a law 
forbidding the United States Bank to do business in 
that state — a practical illustration of nullification — 
there was not a man of consequence in South Caro- 
lina who did not think Ohio in the wrong. Six 
years later those who had not changed their views, 
looked with apprehension which became alarm at 
the probabilities of their opponents taking some ir- 
retrievably rash step, because they understood, as 
did few outside of the state, the peculiar tempera- 
ment of the people. A Unionist writer in the 
Charleston City Gazette, July 16, 1827, said that the 
ambitious struggles for office and the effect upon 
passionate young men anxious for "death or pro- 
motion ' ' were in a fair way to draw the state into 



118 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

controversies in which she would have everything 
to lose, and to alienate her from a course which had 
made her past so illustrious. On Independence 
Day, 1828, at a dinner of Unionists in Charleston, 
among the toasts were these : ' ' The Constitution 
of the United States — we have enjoyed life, liberty 
and happiness under its benign influence 5 we will 
die in defense of its principles," and : "The Union 
of the States — it has stood unharmed the assaults of 
enemies from abroad ; it will be impregnable to the 
attacks of traitors at home." ' Who were the 
"traitors at home" was well understood. They, 
too, were having a public dinner in another part 
of the town and making open threats of dis- 
union. 

Who were Calhoun's followers at this time ? Not 
the state rights men. One of them asked on July 
27, 1827: "Who toast him? Who claim him? 
Why, the old Federalists, whose doctrine he illus- 
trates." But the Unionists did not want him 
either. As late as July 24, 1828, the Unionist 
Charleston City Gazette said that he was the 
author of all the ills from which the South was suf- 
fering ; that at present no one could divine what his 
views were ; that he veered about like a weather- 
cock, and that his political tergiversations had dis- 
gusted the old Republicans ; that he was a danger- 
ous politician and intriguer and ought to be retired 
to his farm at Pendleton. 

The Unionists called their opponents the Dis- 
1 Charleston City Gazette, July 7, 1828, 



CALHOUN'S OPPONENTS 119 

union party and in making up the tickets for elec- 
tion to the legislature which received the Calhoun 
Exposition, the line of cleavage in many districts 
was the question of union or disunion. There was 
not the slightest doubt in the minds of the Unionists 
of how attempts at disunion should be met. Dis- 
union was treason ; disunionists were traitors. The 
duty of the people was to arise in their strength, 
and deal with them as "open, bare-faced oppo- 
nents of the common weal." They were working to 
dissolve the Union in order to gratify the pride, 
vanity and ambition of a few disappointed indi- 
viduals. These individuals wished to erect an in- 
dependent sovereignty in hope of securing offices 
and honors which they were unable to attain in the 
Union. It was even asserted that they intended to 
erect a monarchy, urged to do so by the desire to 
obtain the decorations and titles of nobility. These 
charges, made in heat, were an exaggeration. Of 
people who wished to erect the Kingdom of South 
Carolina, there were very few ; but of people who 
hoped to see a separate independency, there were 
many. The state was torn asunder by contending 
factions, determined on one side to resist the tariff; 
determined on the other side to deal with such re- 
sistance as with rebellion. A terrible struggle was 
about to take place ; friendships and family ties 
were to be broken ; civil war was to become almost 
a fact. Out of it all was to arise a leader with 
greater power than any leader in the state had ever 
had before or has ever had since ; but he was to be the 



120 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

leader of a new state, erected upon the ruins of the 
old, which had held so proud a place in the 
Union and had done so much toward its upbuild- 
ing- 



CHAPTER IX 

SOUTH CAROLINA IN 1830 

It is now necessary to take a glance at the state 
and the people of the state in which this contest 
occurred. 

At no time in her history did conditions which 
produce a normal, healthy social growth prevail 
in South Carolina. What was there from the be- 
ginning was a landed aristocracy, for the profes- 
sional men who shared the controlling influence 
with the planters usually had plantations of their 
own and were the sons of planters. The period of 
the full efflorescence of Carolina society had passed 
with the first quarter of the century ; after that 
time it steadily drooped. The census of 1820 re- 
vealed the fact that the seat of empire had passed 
from the South to the North ; that Virginia was no 
longer the most populous state, but that New York 
had taken her place. The population of South 
Carolina was 502,741, and in 1830 it was 581,185, a 
gain of more thau 79,000 ; but iu the same period 
Massachusetts had gained about 87,000 and New 
York nearly 600, 000. Between 1830 and 1840 South 
Carolina gained only a little over 13,000 inhabit- 
ants. In 1820 she ranked in population the eighth 
state in the Union : in 1830 the ninth ; in 1840 the 



122 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

eleventh. The Charleston district actually decreased 
in population between the years 1830 and 1840. 
The public men were painfully aware of this general 
decline, and wondered why stagnation and decay 
should prevail in a state so richly endowed with 
natural wealth. 

It was a unique community. There were similar- 
ities between the life in South Carolina and in other 
parts of the South, but the climate and the face of 
the country were so singular that the life also was 
singular. The people were sprung from many 
stocks. There were Germans, Irish, Quakers and 
Welsh among them, but the larger number of the 
early settlers were Huguenots, Scotch-Irish and 
English. They had amalgamated completely, and 
differences in religion and family names were the 
only marks of the differences of origin. Early in 
the century the society was recruited by a slight 
immigration of high-born West Indian Englishmen, 
and the plantation life was not unlike the West In- 
dian life. 

The classes of the people were widely separated. 
There were no white servants and few tenants. The 
good land was in possession of the rich planters ; 
the inferior land was occupied rent free, or bought 
for an insignificant sum. The farmers, as distin- 
guished from the planters, had moderate holdings, 
owned few slaves, and were generally poor. 
The cottagers were the "poor whites." Because 
there was no middle agricultural class, a traveler 
coming from the North by the usual stage route, 



SOUTH CAKOLINA IN 1830 123 

and seeing the common country life, was impressed 
with its inferiority. After leaving Petersburg, Va., 
he found the whole aspect of the country, the taverns 
and the people, degenerating, and from Petersburg 
to Charleston, a distance of four hundred miles, the 
stage passed through but three small towns and a 
few unimportant villages. 1 When Columbia was 
reached, might be met for the first time a little 
circle of the upper Carolina society, which was as 
highly cultured as any society in the South or in 
America. Any one who had a letter of introduc- 
tion, was certain to experience an abounding and 
charming hospitality, and the innkeepers com- 
plained that private entertainment prevailed to such 
an extent that their business was not worth follow- 
ing. 

The soil of the state is divided into tide-swamp, 
inland-swamp, salt-marsh, oak and hickory high- 
land and pine- barren. All of it is fertile except the 
pine-barren, and this is essential to a swamp planta- 
tion, because there one may sleep without contract- 
ing the fever. The climate is extremely variable. 
Commonly there is no frost for eight months of the 
year, but hurricanes and storms sweep the coast, 
and the history of the state includes the record of 
many frightful disasters from conflict of the ele- 
ments. 

In 1830 more than half the population was com- 
posed of slaves. As there was no other state in 

1 Remarks During a Journey TJirough North America in 1819, 
'20 and '21, by Adam Hodgson, of Liverpool, p. Ill, 



124 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

which their numbers so predominated, so in no 
other state were such extraordinary precautions 
taken against their insurrection. They were not 
permitted to travel without passes ; they were not 
allowed to congregate in numbers ; they must be 
at their homes at nightfall. In fear of their revolt, 
the white inhabitants almost literally slept upon 
their arms, and the streets of the towns were under 
military patrol. As the activities of the Abolition- 
ists in the North increased, the rigor of the laws to 
keep the slaves in subjection increased also. 

In 1830, 86,338 people lived in Charleston and its 
vicinity, about three times as many as in any other 
district in the state. The city itself had about 40, 000 
inhabitants. It was the second in population in the 
South, and second to hardly any in America in the 
luxurious life of a large number of its people. To 
foreigners it was almost as well known as Bristol or 
Liverpool, and surprise was expressed that a state 
apparently so poor should contain a city apparently 
so rich. Bales of cotton and barrels of rice filled 
the wharves and streets near the harbor to overflow- 
ing. Commerce, agriculture, fashion, all had their 
centre in Charleston. There one of the most charm- 
ing social circles on the continent flourished. Con- 
versation was made an art. There were men famous 
as raconteurs and wits and dinner-givers, of elegant 
literary attainments and of broad culture, gained by 
foreign education and travel. 

Of manufactures there were none in South Caro- 
lina. An effort was made to start coarse cotton 



SOUTH CAKOLINA IN 1830 125 

manufacture iu 1807 and homespun in 1809 ; but 
both failed, and thereafter the people followed their 
natural bent and were agriculturists. They were 
prejudiced against commercial and mercantile pur- 
suits. Iu a speech in the House in 1811 Calhoun 
spoke contemptuously of the "low and calculating 
avarice" of shops and counting-houses, and mer- 
chants in Charleston were obliged to import their 
clerks from Europe, the native youth being un- 
trained to habits of industry and obedience. There 
was an additional argument against manufactures. 
The blacks had not sufficient intelligence to be em- 
ployed in the factories ; the "poor whites " were not 
numerous or industrious enough ; the hands would 
consequently have to be brought from the North 
and might disseminate Northern Abolition ideas. 
On the other hand, internal improvements looking 
to the transportation of products, were undertaken 
extensively and fostered by the state government. 

Cotton and rice were almost the only important 
products of the state, and each year it sent many 
millions of dollars' worth abroad. Unfortunately, 
however, the conditions favorable to rice culture 
are unfavorable to health, for the tide-swamp lands 
where the largest crops are grown, are formed of 
the deposits of fresh water streams, dead and 
rotted plants and other vegetable matter. The 
fields are flooded periodically, and again exposed to 
the burning rays of the sun, and, as a consequence, 
give forth a malarial poison which few constitu- 
tions can withstand. There was exaggeration, 



126 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

doubtless, in the statement in Charles Dickens's 
magazine that every barrel of rice in South Carolina 
"might be said to cost a human life," 1 but it 
approached the fact. The planters fled from their 
plantations in the summer, seeking the sea-breezes 
of Charleston and Sullivan's Island, and when these 
places became too hot, many of them went to the 
watering-resorts of the North. The rice or cotton 
plantation was a kingdom in extent and in the 
authority of its head. It covered an area of from 
1,000 to 3,000 acres, and often as many as seven or 
eight hundred slaves lived on a single estate. The 
owner, who was the first in authority, vested his 
command for a considerable part of the year in the 
overseer; he had under him negro "head-men," 
whose duty it was to see that the groups of hands 
performed the labor allotted to them. The houses 
were generally large but simple frame structures, 
set upon pillars with an open space underneath to 
allow free circulation of air ; but there were some 
elaborate mansions, and especially near Charleston 
a few magnificent ones. The planters lived like 
rich men, often having three establishments, — the 
plantation, a house in Charleston, and a cottage on 
Sullivan's Island. They were far removed from 
popular movements, but because of their extra- 
ordinary privileges were fiercely democratic in 
political life, while aristocratic in social life. 
Speaking of these communities before the Eevolu- 
tion, Burke warned the British government that 
1 All the Year Round, Vol. IV, p. 441. 



SOUTH CAROLINA IN 1830 127 

slaveholders were, by their very habits of niaster- 
dom, made more vigilant, jealous, and hardy 
than other men in defense of their own liberties. 
The South Carolina planters had henchmen and re- 
tainers and enjoyed authority almost unlimited over 
large numbers of their fellow-men. Generally they 
were ou good terms with their slaves, who hated the 
overseers and not the masters. The indolent life 
which many of them led brought its usual ac- 
companiment of intemperance, and the people 
were uneducated in habits of self-denial or self-re- 
straint, for in plantation life they encountered little 
opposition. These facts, added to an irritable 
physical condition produced by a hot, insalubrious 
climate, made duelling a social institution, and al- 
though deprecated by the more enlightened people 
and prohibited by the letter of the law, it was sup- 
ported by general public sentiment. Ramsay, 
writing in 1809, said that more duels took place in 
South Carolina every year "than in all of the nine 
states north of Maryland." x But from the same 
conditions which produced the duelist, the lazy 
sensualist, and the intolerant provincial, also 
sprang the man of affairs, humane, studious, and 
accustomed from childhood to responsibility for the 
welfare of others. At the time of which we are 
writing, the people had found in the matchless 
romances of Sir Walter Scott the kind of literature 
which satisfied their ideals more completely than 
any other had ever done, and they read and absorbed 
1 History of South Carolina, Vol. II, p. 387. 



128 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

the Waverley novels with positive enthusiasm. 
Brave men of heroic deeds, and women, gentle, de- 
voted and pure, all living in a society almost 
medieval in its constitution — these strongly ap- 
pealed to them. 

A foreigner described a Carolina planter as hav- 
ing "an ease, a grace, a generosity, and largeness 
of character incompatible with the daily routine of 
petty occupations and struggles of modern commer- 
cial life." * They were a people with strong lights 
and shades of character, of impetuous temperament, 
proud and self-centred, but brave and chivalrous, 
with many noble qualities. In the early part of 
his career Calhoun had spoken disparagingly of the 
Charlestouians and their luxurious mode of life ; 
but as his experience of the world increased, he be- 
came more tolerant, and the exclusive circle in the 
city received him with open arms and forgot that 
he was not originally one of themselves. 

Because of the increasing poverty there had 
already begun an emigration of young men, chiefly 
to the new Southern states on the Gulf. There was 
a general feeling of unrest. With keen observa- 
tion, Harriet Martineau, who visited the state at 
this time, saw the real trouble. "The high spirit 
of South Carolina is of that kind which accompanies 
fallen or inferior fortunes," she said. " Pride and 
poverty chafe the spirit. They make men look 
around for injury and aggravate the sense of injury 
when it is real." And she added : "If not a single 
1 All the Year Bound, February, 1861. 



SOUTH CAROLINA IN 1830 129 

impost had ever been imposed, there would still 
have been the contrasts which they cannot endure 
to perceive between the thriving states of the North 
and their own. Now, when they see the flourishing 
villages of New England, they cry, ' We pay for all 
this!"' 

As the people were mistaken in supposing that 
the poverty which they endured was produced by 
the tariff, so were they mistaken in supposing that 
such prosperity as they enjoyed was produced by 
slavery. Into this fatal error Calhoun fell along 
with his people. His father, the old pioneer, had 
not come of a slaveholding class, and there were no 
slaves in the part of South Carolina in which he 
had lived when he settled there ; but when he was in 
the legislature he had returned from a visit to 
Charleston with a black boy whom he had bought, 
riding on the horse behind hiin. He called him Adam 
and soon found him a wife. When his son John 
was born, there was a black family coming on, and 
Sawney, one of Adam's children, was Johu's play- 
mate, companion and servant. There were then no 
overseers in the Abbeville district, and the worst 
features of slavery were not present. White men 
did field-work, and John and Sawney followed the 
plow together. The Carolina farmers bought slaves 
when they could and thought them profitable ; this 
opinion was almost universal among them. Cal- 
houn's early years were spent as a Carolina farmer, 
from which he progressed to the more important 
position of a planter, and it was an unheard-of prop- 



130 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

osition that a plantation conld be successfully 
worked without slaves. Now, as the wealth and 
prosperity of South Carolina were in its plantations, 
so were its wealth and prosperity supposed to be in 
its slaves. Thus the people reasoned and thus Cal- 
houn reasoned with them. The years at New 
Haven and Litchtield — five in all — were the only 
years he had ever spent out of the shadow of slavery. 
It enveloped him from his infancy. He could not 
have escaped from it, and he never sought to do so. 
In 181(5, in the House of Representatives, he de- 
scribed the slave-trade as " an odious traffic," and 
acknowledged that he was ashamed of South Caro- 
lina's influence in continuing it ; but he went no 
farther than that and no opinion of his deprecating 
slavery is on record. On the contrary, he became 
the greatest advocate of the institution in American 
public life. While the noble race of old Virginians 
was passing from the stage, gloomily looking into the 
future, and seeing there the awful fate awaiting the 
land because of slavery, Calhoun and his companions 
were hopefully planning the prosperity of the South 
by confirming and extending the source of its evils. 
His house-servant, Alick, ran away in fear of a 
beating, because Mrs. Calhoun had threatened him 
for some misconduct. When he was apprehended, 
Calhoun had him imprisoned for a week on bread 
and water, and then sent home after thirty lashes 
had been well laid on. A perfectly humane man 
found this course necessary "to prevent," as he 
said, " the formation of the habit of running away ; " 



SOUTH CAROLINA IN 1830 131 

but how could an intelligent man conclude that 
men like Alick were a desirable laboring class ? 
The Colonization Society, with its project for send- 
ing free blacks back to Africa and encouraging 
emancipation, came as a gleam of hope to enlight- 
ened Southerners. It was truly described in the 
House of Representatives as "an institution which 
is the favorite of the gentlemen in the slaveholdi in- 
states," but the legislature of South Carolina, as we 
have seen, passed resolutions, with which Calhoun 
fully agreed, in opposition to the Society's plan. 
On February 18, 1837, he cast this horoscope for 
his people : 

[Abolition schemes having been successfully re- 
sisted] "we will be the greatest and most flourish- 
ing people of modern time. It [slavery] is the best 
substratum of population in the world ; and one on 
which great and flourishing commonwealths may be 
most easily and safely reared." 

He believed that a great, progressive, prosperous 
republic could be built on slave labor, when it was in 
reality hardly better than convict labor. Those un- 
willingly performing it must be driven with the 
whip, aud guarded by pickets lest they run away. 
When Calhoun attributed the lack of prosperity of 
a slave-ridden, semi-tropical country to a tariff law, 
he reasoned on a level with his neighbors, but there 
were thousands of Carolinians who looked upon his 
fallacious arguments with surprise, and wondered 
how a man of such rich mental gifts could display 
such poverty of discernment. 



132 JOHN 0. CALHOUN 

There was no other state, however, in which slavery 
was so deeply rooted, and the responsibility for its con- 
tinued existence in America was with South Caro- 
lina more than with any other state. It matters 
not if New England men and Englishmen did first 
introduce the slaves ; the Southern states had, in 
the beginning, the same power to set them free as 
the Northern states. Slavery was in the Constitution 
because the South Carolina delegates to the consti- 
tutional convention insisted upon putting it there. 
They plainly told the convention that their state 
would not accept the instrument, unless it safe- 
guarded slave property, and every effort in the 
South making toward emancipation was blocked 
by the immovable attitude of South Carolina. There 
were many in the state who abhorred slavery ; there 
were many who fled to escape from it ; but none who 
wielded power derived from the people dared do 
otherwise than uphold it. A small cultured circle 
of society flourished under it, but general continued 
prosperity was impossible. There was no inter- 
change of the classes and no infusion of new energy 
and life. What a contrast to the free communities 
of the North, where every one was working, lab- 
orers were becoming employers, capital was being 
rapidly created, new life was pouring in, and 
prosperity was increasing by leaps and bounds ! 



CHAPTER X 

REFINEMENTS OF CREEDS 

When Calhoun went to Washington in December, 
1829, to enter upon his duties as Vice-President for 
a second term, he left his state in a condition of 
anxious suspense, for the ensuing months would 
bring peace or war. The tariff must be changed ; 
if it was not, South Carolina must submit in humilia- 
tion, or take measures of resistance. Calhoun had 
abandoned hope of relief from the party to which 
he had thus far belonged. The central figure in it 
was Andrew Jackson, and Calhoun believed him to 
be weak and ignorant. At this time he read the 
future with remarkable incorrectness. He thought 
that if the Democrats followed Jackson for a few 
years longer, they would be overthrown ; that if 
Jackson should be elected for a second term, his 
prestige would be weakened and his popularity lost ; 
that Van Buren could never be elected Vice-Presi- 
dent ; that the nullification theory would be gen- 
erally accepted in about three years' time, and that 
South Carolina would be recognized as the leader in 
a great reform movement. He believed this reform 
to be necessary to save what he called " our splendid 
political experiment." As the plots and intrigues 
of Jackson's followers thickened, Calhoun became 
disgusted with the whole tone of political life, 



134 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

which without doubt had lowered perceptibly. The 
President's honesty and popularity, he said, had 
been combined with Yau Buren's cunning and 
unscrupulousness, and the result was a corruption of 
the government such as had been hitherto unknown. 
He found himself contending with men who were 
his inferiors in motives, knowledge and character. 
Their rivalries and personal campaigns for office 
had been forced upon the attention of the people in 
such a way that questions concerning the principles 
of government had been excluded from their thoughts. 
The decadence of good political sentiment Calhoun 
attributed to the fact that the general government 
had been permitted to aggrandize all power to itself. 
The remedy, of course, was state interposition, the 
wholesome threat and fear of which should at all 
times be kept in evidence as a check upon the 
natural tendencies of the Federal government. In 
the present aspect of affairs, Calhoun could not act 
with the Whigs, who were tariff men and opposed 
to state rights, nor with the Democrats, who were 
Jackson and Van Bureu men ; so he stood alone, 
and bent his energies to the work of bringing his 
state into a position of similar solitude. 

The session beginning December, 1831, was no- 
table for the opportunity afforded him of casting a 
fateful vote. Van Buren had left the State Depart- 
ment, having been appointed Minister to England 
during the recess of Congress. When his nomi- 
nation came before the Senate, a majority of the 
members were opposed to its confirmation ; but a 



REFINEMENTS OF CREEDS 135 

few of the majority refrained from voting on the 
question, in order to make a tie and give the Vice- 
President the casting vote. He promptly voted for 
rejection. He believed Van Buren had hatched the 
plot which had so successfully caused the breach be- 
tween him and Jackson ; but apart from that, he 
utterly abhorred Van Buren' s methods, and attrib- 
uted to him, more than to any other one person, 
the deplorable condition to which politics had sunk. 
There was an element of vindictiveness in the vote, 
for Senator Benton heard him say after he had cast 
it, " It will kill him, sir, kill him dead. He will 
never kick, sir, never kick." Nevertheless, it was 
Calhoun's duty, as he saw it, to " kill " Van Buren, 
if he could. 

The same legislature that promulgated without 
adopting Calhoun's Exposition of 1828, did adopt a 
temperate remonstrance against the tariff which 
Judge William Smith, whose term of service in the 
Senate had not yet expired, presented to that body 
on February 10, 1829, and supported with an old- 
fashioned state rights speech. Robert Young Hayne 
also made a solemn appeal in which he warned the 
Senate that the voice of the state must be heeded, 
but neither Smith nor Hayne even hinted at the 
right of state veto. The great nullifier presided 
over the Senate, but his doctrine was not announced 
there until a year later when Hayne engaged in his 
great forensic duel with Daniel Webster. Senator 
Foot, of Connecticut, having introduced a harmless 
resolution providiug for an inquiry into the expedi- 



136 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

ency of suspending the sale of the public lauds, 
Hayue spoke on January 19, 1830, opposing any 
plan by which the proceeds of sales of the lauds 
should become permanent revenue of the general 
government, because such an income would tend to 
cousolidate power and render the Federal govern- 
ment independent of the states. The next day Web- 
ster said he welcomed any measure that would be 
likely to consolidate the Union, and pointedly al- 
luded to recent proceedings in South Carolina which 
had caused the suggestion (quoting Dr. Cooper) 
that the time had come when the value of the Union 
should be calculated. The great debate was then 
precipitated. Hayne's contention was "that, in 
ease of plain, palpable violation of the Constitution 
by the general government, a state may interpose ; 
and that this interposition is constitutional." He 
insisted that the only difference between himself and 
Webster was that Webster would resist such acts by 
revolution and force, and he by peaceable, constitu- 
tional means. He drew his arguments almost en- 
tirely from the Virginia Resolutions and Madison's 
report, and made no direct quotations from the Cal- 
houn Exposition. Nevertheless, he had announced 
" the Carolina doctrine " and it was now formally 
before the country. There was no doubt among the 
nullifiers that Hayne's arguments completely de- 
molished Webster's and they were much encouraged 
by the debate. There was still, however, fair reason 
for hoping that the nullification program would not 
be carried out, for Jackson in his message of De- 



REFINEMENTS OF CREEDS 137 

cember, 1831, recommended a revision of the exist- 
ing tariff, which was producing a redundant reve- 
nue. There seemed, also, to be a good chance that 
the state might save itself without outside help. 

In 1830, after a hot contest, James R. Priugle, a 
Unionist, was elected Intendant of Charleston, and 
enough members of this party were sent to the legis- 
lature to prevent the calling of the state convention. 
In December, 1830, the legislature adopted six reso- 
lutions, which were a pronouncement of the right of 
state interposition, coupled with professions of de- 
votion to the Union, and containing no threat of 
immediate action. The word nullification was not 
used, and by themselves the resolutions were not 
hopelessly harmful ; indeed, many of the Unionists 
might have agreed to them in the main. The 
hist avowing warm attachment to the Constitution, 
the second expressing devotion to the Union, and 
the third declaring that the Federal government de- 
rived its powers from a compact to which the states 
were parties, were the same as the first three of the 
Virginia Resolutions of 1700. 

The fourth resolution was that the states are not 
united by the principle of unlimited submission to 
the general government, and that whenever this 
government assumes undelegated powers, its acts 
are unauthorized, void, and of no force ; that the 
general government is not the final arbiter of its 
own powers, and that each party has a right to 
judge of infractions for itself. This was the first 
Kentucky resolution. 



138 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

The fifth resolution, regretting the inclination of 
the Federal government to enlarge its powers by 
forced and unwarranted constitutional construction 
and the consequent tendency to transform itself into 
a monarchy, was substantially the same as the fourth 
Virginia resolution. Thus far the Democratic party 
throughout the whole Union could have said 
"amen " to the creed. 

The sixth resolution was an adaptation of the 
third and fifth Virginia resolutions, but the modifi- 
cations were of radical importance ; for South Caro- 
lina said the tariff laws were '' deliberate and highly 
dangerous and oppressive violations of the constitu- 
tional compact, and that whenever any state, which 
is suffering under this oppression, shall lose all 
reasonable hope of redress from the wisdom and jus- 
tice of the Federal government, it will be its right 
and duty to interpose, in its sovereign capacity, for 
the purpose of arresting the progress of the evil oc- 
casioned by the said unconstitutional acts." Vir- 
ginia had said " the states'''' might interpose ; it never 
said a single state might. Kentucky had spoken of 
the right of interposition of " the several states," 
and to this day no man knows whether or not one 
state or more was meant. But the Virginia Eeso- 
lutions had declared the Alien and Sedition Laws to 
be u palpable " violations of the Constitution, and the 
South Carolina legislature did not say the tariff 
laws were palpably unconstitutional, for no man 
could honestly say so. 

Before the passage of these resolutions, a Union 



KEFINEMENTS OF CEEEDS 139 

meeting in the disloyal Colleton district had com- 
pressed the anti-nullification creed of the state 
rights Unionists into a single resolution : " That 
we do not consider the right of a state to ' nullify,' 
or forcibly arrest and make void a law of Congress, 
as a constitutional right, but as a right of sover- 
eignty paramount to the Constitution ; that although 
such a right might be exercised by a state in its 
sovereign capacity, after it shall have recalled to it- 
self the powers which it has delegated to the Fed- 
eral government, and thus have made itself (what 
no state now is) a perfect sovereign and independent 
nation, yet such a power evidently cannot be right- 
fully exercised, so long as a state continues a mem- 
ber of the Union and avails itself of its laws." 

The members of the Union party were all against 
nullification, and were all loyal to the Union, 
but beyond this they were far apart in their beliefs. 
For example, at the Union dinner held at Charles- 
ton on July 4, 1830, William Drayton made a 
speech in which he conceded the right of a state to 
secede, but declared it to be absurd for it to remain 
in the Union and nullify Federal laws. He was, as 
we have seen, one of the earliest and most consistent 
opponents of the tariff. On the other hand, Justice 
William Johnson, of the Supreme Court, who 
would not return to the state because of the political 
turmoil, sent a letter in which he said " that Caro- 
lina had not only not been injured but really bene- 
fited to many thousands by the tariff," and that 
nullification was folly, and talk of peaceable nulli- 



140 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

fication a "silly and wicked delusion, " growing 
out of " a deliberate conspiracy against the Union," 
which had been steadily at work for six years. 
The proposed state convention was "the grand end 
and aim and agent of that conspiracy." At the 
fourth of July dinner of 1831, Hugh S. Legare de- 
clared positively that the tariff was unconstitu- 
tional and Petigru as positively that it was con- 
stitutional. 

Some of the Unionists insisted on state rights, but 
believed that the final decision of constitutional ques- 
tions belonged to the Supreme Court, and that the 
right of secession did not exist. Others thought 
that the people, and not the states, were the parlies 
to the Constitution, and that the general govern- 
ment was finally supreme. Still others were of 
the opinion that a state had the constitutional 
right to secede but not to nullify, and these formed 
the largest group in the Union party. Others, 
again, held that three-fourths of the states had a 
right, by concerted action, to set aside a palpably 
unconstitutional and unbearably oppressive law, 
after all the branches of the Federal government 
had concurred in putting it into effect, but indig- 
nantly denied that any one state could nullify it. 

There were refinements of the constitutional be- 
liefs of the nullifiers, too. One group believed in 
the absolute, unchecked supremacy of each state 
over the Constitution, and said that allegiance was due 
to the state alone ; they acknowledged and felt no 
other allegiance. Nullification, therefore, was but 



REFINEMENTS OP CREEDS 141 

an incident of true state sovereignty. Another 
group thought the national government and the 
state government were equal sovereigns with no 
common arbiter in case of disputes. Nullification, 
therefore, was a right of one of the sovereigns. 
Still another group contended that South Carolina 
ought to secede from the Union by revolution or re- 
bellion, and that nullification was merely a step in 
this direction. There was yet another group which, 
while the members looked upon nullification as a 
right derived from the sovereignty of the states, re- 
garded it as the keystone in the arch that supported 
the Union and the great strengthening feature of 
our system of government, holding firmly in place 
the rights of the states on one side and the rights of 
the Federal government on the other, and render- 
ing both irrefragably strong. They thought it the 
greatest discovery ever made since men began to 
study the science of government. Calhoun was in 
this group : its other members were but the chorus 
to his play. While all of these affiliating nullifica- 
tion groups were willing to put their theory into 
effect, they had widely different reasons for wishing 
to do so, and widely different expectations of what 
would be the result ; for one wing desired it to 
bring about the disruption of the Union and the 
other hoped that it would save the Union. It can- 
not be too often repeated that Calhoun adhered to 
the latter party. 

"To preserve our Union on the fair basis of 
ecpiality, on which alone it can stand, and to trans- 



142 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

mit the blessing of liberty to the remotest posterity, 
is the first object of all my exertions," he wrote in 
December, 1829, and he repelled again and again 
with perfect honesty the charge that he was a dis- 
unionist. It is also a fact that nullification, as he 
outlined it, would not in practice have resulted in 
secessiou — provided the general government had 
permitted the doctrine to be put into effect. 

As events progressed in South Carolina, Andrew 
Jackson watched them anxiously. He wished to 
see the state saved from the nullifiers by its own 
people ; but he did not allow his own position long 
to remain uncertain. In Carolina a rumor gained 
currency that he was actually in sympathy with nulli- 
fication, and Calhoun himself believed that he could 
count on many of Jackson's associates. On Jeffer- 
son's birthday, April 15, 1830, a public dinner was 
held in Washington at which it was expected that 
some sort of official encouragement to the Calhoun 
party would be obtained ; but Jackson electrified 
the assemblage by proposing as a toast — "The 
Federal Union — it must be preserved." Calhoun 
gave as a reply : " The Union — next to our liberty 
the most dear. May we all remember that it can 
only be preserved by respecting the rights of the 
states, and distributing equally the benefit and the 
burthen of the Union." The simplicity of Jackson's 
sentiment and the qualifications of Calhoun's illus- 
trated effectively the difference between the schools 
of thought which the two men represented. The 
following year Jackson spoke more specifically. 



REFINEMENTS OF CEEEDS 143 

On July 4, 1831, ' there was a large Union rally at 
Charleston, when Petigru, Thomas R. Mitchell, 
Hugh S. Legare, Daniel E. Huger, B. F. Hunt and 
others made great speeches ; but the chief feature 
of the celebration was the reading of a letter from 
Jackson in which he spoke of the plans of dis- 
organization of a certain party in the state, and said 
that if it became necessary he would suppress those 
plans. 

A few weeks after this letter was read, Calhoun 
published his Address on the Relations Which the 
States and General Government Bear to Each Other. 
It was an elaboration of the Exposition of 1S2S, and 
he followed it the next year (August 28, 1832) by 
his letter to Governor Hamilton, which was an 
elaboration of the Address. Here he dwelt upon the 
efficacy of nullification as a peaceful remedy, and 
showed how it would be impossible for the general 
government to briug force to bear upon a nullifying 
slate. Being in the Union, it would be safe, and 
the Supreme Court would surely decide that the 
general government had no right of coercion over 
it. He dwelt also upon the idea that nullification 
would be a cement of the Union ; for if a state could 
nullify, what excuse would it have to secede? He 
insisted, however, that no one could believe in the 
right of secession, which was merely nullification of 
all the Federal laws, without believing in the right 
of nullifying some or one of those laws. He pointed 

1 A full accouut of this meeting may be found in Capers's 
Life and Times of C. G. Memminger, p. 37. 



144 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

out the advantage of nullification as a temporary 
condition. If three-fourths of the states declared 
the law which had been made void to be constitu- 
tional, the nullifying state must submit to it, or 
withdraw from the Union. 

An object sought to be accomplished by the Ad- 
dress and the letter was to bring the opponents of 
the tariff in South Carolina into solid array with 
the hope of crushing the Union party. A bare 
majority for nullification would not do ; there must 
be practical unanimity to carry out the plans suc- 
cessfully, and this was the more necessary, because, 
as Calhoun now admitted, the South generally would 
not support his state. Every device to awaken the 
enthusiasm of the people was resorted to, and their 
passions were soon thoroughly aroused. At Beau- 
fort there was a " Disunion Drama" ; at Charleston 
there was a State Eights Ball ; near Pendleton, B. 
F. Perry, the Unionist editor of the] Greenville 
Mountaineer, killed Tyler Bynum, a nullifier, in a 
political duel. In Charleston the Unionists used to 
meet in the long room of Syle's Tavern, between 
Meeting and King Streets, and the nullifiers around 
the corner in a building known as "The Circus." 
Sometimes the opposing leaders would encounter 
one another in the street after the close of their 
meetings, and riots would be imminent. On one 
of these occasions Petigru, Poinsett and Drayton 
suffered personal violence. In June, 1832, Petigru 
wrote to his sister that one of his old friends, Judge 
Prioleau, was dying. "It is really very distress- 



REFINEMENTS OF CREEDS 145 

ing," be said ; " one of the best men in the relations 
of domestic life that I ever knew, one whom I so 
much esteemed and have been intimate with, and 
now he is going to die and those cursed politics have 
made me almost a stranger to him." 

The conflict had entered into every relation of 
life, but Calhoun had a cooler head and a fairer 
mind than most of his associates. Circumstances 
naturally threw him into personal contact with 
members of his own party, but he endeavored to 
keep in friendship with those relatives and friends 
who were opposed to him. His daughter, Anna 
Maria (afterward Mrs. Thomas G. Clemson) had as 
her roommate at boarding-school the daughter of 
Robert Cunningham, who now refused to unlearn the 
lessons in political principles which Calhoun himself 
had taught him ; and the leader expressed satisfaction 
at the association and cautioned his daughter not to 
disturb it by intruding political discussion. The 
Unionists felt more bitterly toward him than he to- 
ward them, for he was winning, and he had formerly 
been one of them. 

In the elections of the state for 1831-32, Petigru 
was returned to the lower house, but Henry L. 
Pinckney, a nullifier, was elected Intendant of 
Charleston, and it soon became apparent that the 
tide was setting irresistibly against the Unionists. 
The governor, in response to a request from a large 
number of citizens, appointed a day for general fast- 
ing, humiliation and prayer, to propitiate Provi- 
dence for the calamities which had visited the state j 



146 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

and one of the first acts of the legislature was to re- 
solve on December 17, 1831, that Jackson's threaten- 
ing letter of July 4th was unwarrantable and re- 
garded by the people of the state as repulsive. 
This resolution was carried, however, by a majority 
of only twelve votes in the House and nine in the 
Senate. 

In the latter part of the year, an effort was made 
to bring the question of the constitutionality of the 
tariff before a local jury in the Federal court sit- 
ting at Charleston. If the jury should decide that 
it was unconstitutional, the milliners would score an 
important point. E. Holmes and Alexander Mazyek, 
members of the Charleston bar, imported a bale of 
cloth and would not pay the duty. The United 
States Attorney, Edward Frost, refused to bring suit 
against them, and although the nullifiers lauded 
him for his action and made him a hero, Jackson 
promptly removed him, and appointed R. B. Gil- 
christ, a Unionist, in his place. When the suit was 
brought, Petigru argued the government's case 
with Gilchrist, Holmes and MacDuffie appearing on 
the other side. The point was whether the court 
would receive evidence other than that which re- 
lated merely to the execution of the bonds for the 
payment of the duty. If such evidence might be 
introduced, the question of the constitutionality of 
the act under which the duty was levied could be 
brought before the jury ; but the court refused to 
cooperate and the scheme failed. 1 The outcome of 
1 The case is reported in Niles' Weekly Register, Vol. XLI, p. 119. 



KEFINEMENTS OF CEEEDS 147 

the suit showed how strongly public sentiment was 
arrayed on the side of the defendants. Being un- 
able to collect the duty, the government seized 
Holmes's house and sold it at auction. It was bid 
in by one of his political sympathizers, who refused 
to comply with the terms of the sale. It was again 
put up at auction, but not a single bid was re- 
ceived. 

No other effort was made toward a legal solution 
of the difficulties, and after the passage of the tariff 
law of July 14, 1832, it was realized that all lesser 
schemes must give way before the greater one, pro- 
posed by Calhoun. 

The tariff act of 1832 was even more odiously pro- 
tective in its features than the " tariff of abomina- 
tions," and its enactment was a great blunder. The 
protectionists, already fat with spoils, reached for 
more and thereby jeopardized what they already 
had. They were indifferent to the attitude of 
South Carolina, but they might have known that 
it was only an exaggerated manifestation of a disap- 
proval of the tariff, which extended all over the 
South and into many parts of the North. If the 
protectionists had been content with a more moder- 
ate and reasonable law than that of 1828, they 
might have enjoyed the benefits of the schedules for 
a long time. 

As soon as the bill was passed, the nullification 
members of the South Carolina delegation in Con- 
gress issued an address to their constituents telling 
them that it was useless to wait longer— that no re- 



148 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

lief could be hoped for from the general government. 
The dread test had come ; the state must take the 
necessary steps to render the obnoxious law inoper- 
ative within its borders. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE ORDINANCE 

If the legislature had not changed its mind, the 
Congressional delegation which included the mem- 
bers who announced that South Carolina could 
cherish no hope of relief from her burdens from the 
national government, would have been the last 
from the state— at any rate, for some years. On De- 
cember 13, 1831, a law had been passed ordering 
that no polls for the election of representatives 
should be opened the following autumn. This was 
repealed later on, however, having been enacted, 
probably, as an expression of displeasure, which it 
was thought wise to withdraw after it was found to 
have been ineffective. 

As soon as Congress adjourned, Calhoun returned 
to "Fort Hill" and placed himself at the head of 
his party. Then followed the most momentous 
election in the history of the state ; and the most 
momentous in his political career, because of the ef- 
fect it had upon his fortunes. All the disunion men 
were with him, and many cooler heads, who were at- 
tracted by the peaceable aspect of his theory. It was 
not this aspect, however, that caused the great tide 
of nullification enthusiasm, which now swept over 
South Carolina and caught up many men who had 



150 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

thus far held aloof from it ; but the belief that the 
state was in danger and needed the defense of all 
her sons. It was their home and they rushed to 
protect it. They were warm-blooded men whose 
world was their state, and many who might have 
educated them to a broader patriotism, taught them 
that they owed allegiance to the state only. On 
this subject Dr. Cooper said in the introduction to 
the Statutes at Large of South Carolina, which he 
compiled by direction of the legislature in 1836 : 
u If a citizen of this state be asked, ' Are you an 
American ? ' his reply ought to be : ' Sir, I am a 
South Carolinian,' " and Cooper was presideut of 
the chief institution of learning in the state. 

This was a slaveholding community, where fidel- 
ity and unthinking devotion were necessary virtues. 
The people taught them to their inferiors, and gave 
them in rich measure to their sovereign, the state. 
William Henry Trescot has spoken of the intense 
feeling of loyalty which existed in the whole South 
at a later period, but his remarks may well be ap- 
plied to South Carolina from the time when she def- 
initely and completely accepted the leadership of 
Calhoun : ' ' The feeling of state loyalty had acquired 
throughout the South an almost fantastic intensity ; 
— particularly in the old Colonial states did this de- 
votion to the state assume that blended character of 
affection and duty, which gives in the Old World 
such a chivalrous coloring to loyalty to the crown. 
The existence of large hereditary estates, the trans- 
mission from generation to generation of social and 



THE ORDINANCE 151 

political consideration, the institution of slavery, 
creating of the whole white race a privileged class, 
through whom the pride and power of its highest rep- 
resentatives were naturally diffused, all contributed 
to give a peculiarly personal and family feeling to 
the ordinary relation of the citizen to the common- 
wealth. Federal honors were undervalued, and even 
Federal power was underrated, except as they were 
reflected back from the interests and prejudices of 
the state." 

The party in South Carolina which couteuded 
against the supremacy of state over national loyalty 
was slow to give up, and in September, 1832, it held 
a convention at Columbia. Notwithstanding the 
feverish excitement prevalent at the time, the tone 
of the address put forth was mollifying and calm. 
It was drawn up by Petigru, and was a masterly 
refutation of the nullification doctrine. The peo- 
ple, it said, were practically united in their opposi- 
tion to the tariff, aud differed only on the question 
of the proper thing to do to secure its repeal. Nul- 
lification as a peaceful course of action must be a 
mere suit at law, and a weak and futile one. As a 
forcible policy, it inevitably involved an infraction 
of the Constitution and the beginning of a revolution. 
If a state could nullify a law of Congress, the Fed- 
eral government must go the way of the old Confed- 
eration. It was a monstrous proposition that the 
Federal government did not have the power to exe- 
cute its own laws. A peaceable dissolution of the 
Union by secession might be possible, but nullifica- 



152 JOHN 0. CALHOUN 

tion must produce a collision between the state and 
Federal forces. Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, 
Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi were as much 
interested as South Carolina in a repeal of the tariff ; 
let a convention of these states be called to deliber- 
ate on measures of redress. The appeal was in 
vain. In the elections of 1832 the total Unionist 
vote was about 17,000, while the milliners polled 
about 23,000. No one man was as much responsible 
for this sweeping victory as Calhoun. But, while 
the null! hers outnumbered the Unionists by 0,000, 
a two- thirds majority in the legislature was neces- 
sary to authorize a state convention. This also was 
obtained, the vote by districts being more largely in 
their favor than in the state as a whole. 

The holding of the convention had been de- 
termined upon for some time, but the constitution 
of the state provided that such a body could not be 
called together, unless two-thirds of the entire rep- 
resentation in the legislature authorized it. As we 
have seen, there had never heretofore been a two- 
thirds majority in its favor. The legislature met in 
extra session on October 22, 1832, and authorized 
the calling of the convention for the purpose of con- 
sidering the tariff laws, — the extent of the evils re- 
sulting from them, and the proper means of obtain- 
ing redress. Undoubtedly, a special convention 
was the proper body to give forth an important con- 
stitutional pronouncement. It is true that Ken- 
tucky and Virginia had contented themselves in 
1798-99 with resolutions passed by their respect- 



THE ORDINANCE 153 

ive legislatures ; but Madisou had never been sat- 
isfied wilh this course, and before it was agreed 
upon, had plainly intimated to Jefferson his belief 
that, as the constitutions had been ratified by state 
conventions and nut by slate legislatures, vital ex- 
pressions on constitutional construction ought to 
come from special conventions also. 

The election of delegates proceeded at once, and 
the convention met on Monday, November 19, 1832, 
in the hall of the House of Representatives. The 
governor, James Hamilton, Jr., was elected presi- 
dent. 

The handful of Unionists who were present, 
fought in the face of tremendous odds and were 
soon annihilated. One of them, Henry Middleton, 
formerly governor, and recently returned from 
his mission to Russia, offered a resolution to the ef- 
fect that the convention did not represent the peo- 
ple of the state, because the delegates had been 
chosen on a property basis, instead of by the ag- 
gregate number of freemen. He insisted, therefore, 
that they ought not to consider the questions pre- 
sented to them, but refer them to another conven- 
tion to be constituted upon broader lines. The 
leaders on the nullification side were MacDuffie, 
Hayne, Harper and Turnbull. All of them had 
formerly been nationalists, and MacDuffie accepted 
nullification as a program and not as a creed. They 
were now devoted lieutenants of Calhoun, and were 
united in loyal obedience to him. He did not, how- 
ever, compose any of the fulminations which the 



154 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

convention put forth, but they were all intended to 
meet his views and doubtless did so. The body 
performed its work with business-like dispatch. 
Having brushed aside Middleton's obstructive mo- 
tion, a committee of twenty-one was selected, which 
promptly brought in a report embodying the usual 
arguments against the tariff, and basing the right of 
nullification upon the theory of government set 
forth in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. 
This was written by Hayne. On Saturday, No- 
vember 24th, the ordinance written by Harper, 
to nullify the tariff laws of 1828 and 1832, was 
adopted by a vote of one hundred and thirty-six 
ayes to twenty-six noes. A part of it was con- 
structed with a view to rendering it impossible 
that nullification should be a futile suit at law, as 
the Unionists' address had affirmed it must be. 
The ordinance declared that the two tariff laws 
were " null, void and no law, nor binding upon this 
state, its officers or citizens " ; that it should be the 
duty of the legislature to enact measures to give 
effect to the ordinance and prevent the enforcement 
in the state of the nullified laws after February 1st 
next ; that in no case involving the validity of the 
ordinance before a court of the .state should an ap- 
peal be allowed to the Supreme Court of the United 
States under penalty of punishment for contempt of 
court ; that all officers of the state (members of the 
legislature excepted) should take an oath to obey 
the ordinance under pain of forfeiting their offices 
%£ they refused ; that all jurors in any case in which 



THE ORDINANCE 155 

the ordinance might be in question must take the 
oath also ; and finally, that to make " the govern- 
ment of the United States, and the people of the co- 
states" understand that the state would not sub- 
mit to be reduced to obedience by force, it would 
consider the passage by Congress of any act authoriz- 
ing the employment of a military or naval force 
against it, or auy act closing its ports or designed to 
coerce it, as null and void, " as inconsistent with the 
longer continuance of South Carolina in the Union," 
as dissolving all political connection with the people 
of the other states, and that South Carolina would 
then " forthwith proceed to organize a separate gov- 
ernment, and do all other acts and things which 
sovereign and independent states may of right do." 

This fateful document was signed with much so- 
lemnity and pomp of circumstance, first by Gover- 
nor Hamilton as president of the convention, and 
then by each of the one hundred and thirty-six del- 
egates who had voted for it. Among the signers 
were representatives of the foremost families of 
South Carolina : four Pinckneys, aGaillard, a Barn- 
well and a Porcher, for example ; but many great 
names were not in the list, there being, for in- 
stance, noHugers, Pringles, Dray tons or Middletons. 

Following the ordinance, an address to the people 
of the state was agreed to. It was written by Turn- 
bull and clung to the familiar line of argument. It 
called upon all South Carolinians to face the crisis, 
invoked them in the name of the Constitution " and 
of that Union which you are all desirous to perpet- 



156 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

uate," and iu the name of the state, their "only 
and lawful sovereign," to do their duty to their 
country and leave the consequences to God. Then 
came an address to the people of the United States, 
written by MacDuffie, but the convention did not 
give it this title. As adopted, it was an " Address 
to the People of Massachusetts," etc., each state in 
the Union being named ; and when the milliners 
wished to shorten the title, they called it the "Ad- 
dress to the People of the Co-States." The gover- 
nor so referred to it when he transmitted it to the leg- 
islature. People who were using such unwonted 
language — for it is safe to say that no man had un- 
til recently ever heard of "the people of the 
co-states" — might have uneasily reflected that 
their ideas were as unnatural as was their lan- 
guage. Nevertheless, the address professed to set 
forth what had always been the true meaning of the 
Constitution, and announced that, while the people 
of South Carolina still cherished a rational devotion 
to the Union, they would not hesitate to surrender 
the Union in order to preserve their liberty. They 
were ready, they said, to vindicate their rights, if 
necessary, without the encouragement of a single 
other state. The nature of the taxation which they 
were willing to accept was then unfolded. All the 
articles now protected by the tariff must come in 
free, and revenue bo derived from unprotected ar- 
ticles ; or, if duty was levied on protected articles, 
there must be an excise tax of the same amount on 
like articles made iu the United States. As a conces- 



THE OBDINANCE 157 

sion,the same duty might be imposed upon protected 
as upon unprotected articles, in case no more revenue 
should be raised than was necessary for government 
purposes. If South Carolina was driven out of the 
Union, all of the Southern planting states and some 
of the Western states would surely follow her. 

Neither in the address, nor in any other utterance 
of the convention, was there mention of slavery. 
The question, being for the moment behind the 
screen, was not alluded to as present in the mind of 
any one. > 

If Calhoun had written the ordinance and the ad- 
dresses, they would have been colder in tone and 
more scientific in construction, but he would not 
have changed the arguments, which were meant to 
be only Calhounisni heated up. They were over- 
done, in fact. There was a painful suggestion of 
braggadocio about them. The spectacle was oue 
which might become ridiculous, for South Carolina 
was a very small political entity to talk in a tone of 
confident dictation to the whole United States. 

The convention having adjourned, the legislature 
met to give legal effect to its work. The governor's 
message declared the ordinance of nullification to 
be the fundamental law, and recommended that a 
force of 10,000 troops be raised so that the state 
might be prepared to resist Federal coercion ; but 
the message was not an intemperate one, and it was 
noteworthy that it held out the hope of an adjust- 
ment of pending difficulties by a convention of all 
the states. The legislature then passed three im- 



158 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

portant laws. One provided that an importer could 
recover his goods, if they were detained for non- 
payment of duty, by an act of replevin. The 
second prescribed, as a test oath for all officers of the 
state, except members of the legislature, that they 
must swear to "well and truly obey, execute and 
enforce the ordinance to nullify certain acts of the 
Congress of the Uuited States." The oath was to 
be taken by the judges also. The third ordered that 
if the United States should undertake to execute any 
of the nullified laws, the governor should have au- 
thority to resist the movement b} 7 force. The mili- 
tia was increased, and an extensive purchase of 
arms was authorized. These laws were passed by a 
vote of eighty-eight to twenty-two in the House 
and thirty to eleven in the Senate. The condition of 
unanimity which Calhoun desired was apparently 
approaching. The legislature also instructed the 
governor to propose to the governors of the other 
states a convention to consider the dispute between 
the state and the general government. Calhoun did 
not wish such a meeting to be held until South Caro- 
lina's interposition had actually taken place, as it 
was only then that the necessity of acting on the 
point of difference between the state and the Union 
would exist. In any event, there was no probability 
that a convention, if agreed to, could assemble be- 
fore February 1st, when the ordinance was to go 
into effect. 

Calhoun's plans now required him to enter an- 
other field of activity. As the chosen leader of his 



THE ORDINANCE 159 

state, his position would be most embarrassing and 
equivocal in a contest with the United States, of 
which he was the Vice-President. He decided, 
therefore, to resign the vice-presidency and go to 
the Senate in Hayne's place, the latter being at the 
same time elected governor. The scheme was not 
wholly agreeable to Hayne, who was quite willing 
to return to Washington, and again to grapple with 
Daniel Webster or any one else. But the leaders in- 
sisted upon it, and on December 10th the legislature 
elected Calhoun a United States senator. More than 
two weeks elapsed, however, before he sent the fol- 
lowing letter to Washington : 

" Columbia, S. Carolina. 28th Beer. 1832. 

"Sir, 

" Having concluded to accept of a seat in 
Ihe Senate, to which I have been elected by the 
legislature of this state, I herewith resign the office 
of Vice-President of the United States. 
' ' Very respectfully, 

' ' Your ob ser* 

"J. C. Calhoun. 
"Hon. H. Livingston, 

"See. of State." 1 

There were no precedents for his act and it has 
not formed a precedent. He addressed the Secre- 
tary of State (inadvertently writing the initial 
of his Christian name incorrectly), because that of- 
ficer receives the returns of the votes of electors for 
President and Vice-President and transmits them to 
1 Department of State Manuscript Archives. 



160 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the 
House. He could not resign to the electoral college 
by which he had been elected, because it was not in 
existence ; nor to the Senate, because he had not 
been elected by that body ; nor to the President, 
whose status was the same as his own. The Secre- 
tary of State delayed acknowledging his letter for 
so long that, in the course of three weeks, Calhoun 
wrote to ask whether he had received it. There was 
nobody to accept the resignation. When the Sen- 
ate met on December 3d, the Vice-President was 
absent and Hugh L. White of Tennessee was elected 
president pro tempore. No other official notice was 
taken of Calhoun's absence, and his resignation 
was never brought before that body. 

On January 4th he appeared in his seat as sen- 
ator from South Carolina, and the galleries were 
crowded with visitors, who had come to see him 
take the oath to support the Constitution. His ar- 
rival was dramatic, but his journey to the national 
capital had been still more so. He left South Caro- 
lina the foremost man in the state, followed by the 
blessings and plaudits of the people ; but as he pro- 
ceeded northward, crowds came to see him, impelled 
by curiosity rather than admiration. They looked 
upon him as a marked man, for he was at the head 
of the first state which had ever completely defied 
the Federal government. Many of them thought he 
was a doomed man, for he had defied Andrew Jack- 
son. With the memory of Ambrister and Arbuth- 
not before them, they asked, Would Jackson hang 



THE OKDINANCE 161 

hiin ? The old mail hated him, and when he was 
dying fifteen years afterward, declared that he would 
have hanged him if his state had actually nullified, 
and that the world would have applauded his act. 
But Jackson loved South Carolina, the state of his 
birth, and clung tenaciously to the hope that she 
could be saved by the Union party. Nevertheless, 
he did consider the advisability of bringing Calhoun 
and his associate leaders to the bar of justice on a 
charge of treason, and was probably deterred from 
doing so only by the advice of cooler heads, who 
must have shown him that the crime had not yet 
been actually committed. 

When the ordinance of nullification was passed, 
a properly certified copy, exclusive of the names of 
the signers, was sent to Jackson, being received on 
December 3, 1832, and it now reposes in the archives 
of the State Department. On December 10th, while 
Calhoun was still Vice-President, but while he was 
in South Carolina, Jackson hurled at him a reply 
to his theory of government in the shape of an offi- 
cial proclamation. Congress had already met and 
he might have sent it a message, but he chose the 
more striking method of a direct communication to 
the public. Although his right to issue the proc- 
lamation was cpiestioned, there was really no doubt 
on the point, his authority being derived from the 
universal practice of the head of a state to proclaim 
laws and public acts, and sometimes, quo ad ter- 
rorem populi to admonish them to keep the laws. 

The Nullification Proclamation, as it is called, is 



162 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

the longest proclamation ever issued by a Presi- 
dent, and is the greatest state paper ever signed by 
Jackson. To him undoubtedly belongs the chief 
credit for it ; because he ordered it to be written 
and made notes for its contents, the responsibility 
for it was his. It was, however, Edward Living- 
ston's master mind which wrought it out. There 
are conflicting stories on this point, and Jackson's 
biographer, Parton, has printed one which is com- 
monly accepted, but is obviously apocryphal. In 
the first place, we may look in vain for any writing 
of Jackson's, suggesting the possibility of his com- 
posing such a state paper as the Proclamation. 
His powers lay not in that direction ; whereas any 
one who will examine Edward Livingston's speeches 
in Congress in 179-1, '90 and '98 and 1824 will find 
paraphrases of large parts of it. The argument in 
this paper must be set down here, because it shows 
the attitude of the administration toward Calhoun 
and his party ; and because it made his position 
hopelessly untenable toward the rest of the country, 
and especially toward the Democratic party, with 
which he had heretofore affiliated, and with which 
he must affiliate again, if he was to expect any 
national preferment. The Proclamation went farther 
than most Democrats would go in the views that 
it put forth against the right of secession ; but it 
correctly expressed those views so far as the right of 
nullification was concerned, and fortified them 
against it. As the Calhoun Exposition marked an 
important point in the development of the theory 



THE ORDINANCE 163 

of state sovereignty, so was the Proclamation 
epoch-making in the development of national sov- 
ereignty. The one was a mighty stride toward se- 
cession, and the other a mighty stride toward the 
resistance of secession. 

The nullification ordinances of South Carolina are 
founded, said the Proclamation, " not on the inde- 
feasible right of resisting acts which are plainly un- 
constitutional and too oppressive to be endured, 
but on the strange position that any one state may 
not only declare an act of Congress void, but pro- 
hibit its execution," and at the same time remain in 
the Union. Now, if a law was unconstitutional, 
there were two appeals open — one to the judiciary, 
the other to the people of the states. The Constitu- 
tion is the supreme law of the land, and the j udges 
are bound by it, "anything in the constitution or 
laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding ; " 
so that no state law could interfere with the appeal. 
Suppose the South Carolina doctrine had been in- 
voked by other states from the time the Constitution 
went into operation. Pennsylvania deemed the ex- 
cise law unconstitutional in 1792 ; New England the 
embargo and non-intercourse acts twenty years 
later ; Virginia the carriage tax. If the nullifica- 
tion system had been put into operation, how long 
would the government have lasted? It would, at 
any rate, have gone down in disgrace in the second 
war with Great Britain. The right of nullification 
was a new discovery. " To the statesmen of South 
Carolina belongs the invention," said the Proclama- 



164 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

tion, "and upon the citizens of that state will un- 
fortunately fall the evils of reducing it to practice." 

The Proclamation then showed the evils we had en- 
dured under the meagre government of the Articles 
of Confederation, and how the Constitution, framed 
to remedy those evils, was all in vain if the South 
Carolina doctrine should prevail. The design of 
the Constitution was " to form a more perfect union." 
How could it be said that this was accomplished, if 
the union was at the mercy of the local interest of a 
state or the prevailing faction in a state 1 ? " I con- 
sider, then," it went on, "the power to annul a law 
of the United States, incompatible with the existence 
of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the 
Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent 
with every principle on which it ivas founded, and de- 
structive of the great object for which it was formed." 
It was then pointed out that the act of nullification 
assumed the obnoxious laws to be passed for the pur- 
pose of protecting manufacturers ; yet while it was 
admitted that power was given to Congress to lay 
and collect imposts, it was, nevertheless, insisted that 
the motives of those who passed the laws were uncon- 
stitutional. Who, then, was to decide on a motive 
and a purpose ? If a state might do so, every law 
could be set aside under the pretext of an unconsti- 
tutional motive. 

As for the laws in question operating unequally, 
every law that ever was passed did so, and every 
law could consequently be set aside. We had given 
a great devotion to the Constitution ; " was our de» 



THE OKDINANCE 165 

votion paid to the wretched, inefficient, clumsy con- 
trivance which this new doctrine would make it ? 
Did we pledge ourselves to the support of an airy 
nothing — a bubble that must be blown away by the 
first breath of disaffection ? Was this self-destroy- 
ing, visionary theory the work of the profound 
statesmen, the exalted patriots, to whom the task of 
constitutional reform was entrusted?" As for the 
tariff laws raising more revenue than the govern- 
ment required, was one .state to have the power to 
decide on that point in place of the representatives 
of all the states ? And as for the allegation that the 
revenue raised would be unconstitutionally applied, 
how could this intention be judged in advance? 

Concerning the main features of the ordinance, it 
was asked, " What are they? Every law, then, for 
raising revenue, according to the South Carolina 
ordinance, may be rightfully annulled, unless it be 
so framed as no law ever will or can be framed. 
Congress has a right to pass laws for raising reve- 
nue and each state has a right to oppose their exe- 
cution — two rights directly opposed to each other ; 
and yet is this absurdity supposed to be contained 
in an instrument drawn for the express purpose of 
avoiding collisions between the states and the gen- 
eral government by an assembly of the most enlight- 
ened statesmen and purest patriots ever embodied 
for a similar purpose." 

The Proclamation then spoke of the provisions of 
the Constitution for raising revenue. " Vain pro- 
visions ! ineffectual restrictions ! vile profanation of 



166 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

oaths ! miserable mockery of legislation ! if a bare 
majority of the voters in any one state may, on a 
real or supposed knowledge of tbe intent with which 
a law has been passed, declare themselves free from 
its operation ; say, here it gives too little ; there, too 
much, and operates unequally ; here it suffers ar- 
ticles to be free that ought to be taxed ; there it 
taxes those that ought to be free ; in this case the pro- 
ceeds are intended to be applied to purposes which 
we do not approve ; in that, the amount raised is 
more than is wanted. . . . But we, part of the 
people of one state, to whom the Constitution has 
given no power on the subject, from whom it has 
expressly taken it away ; ive, who have solemnly 
agreed that this Constitution shall be our law ; we, 
most of whom have sworn to support it — ice now 
abrogate this law and swear, and force others to 
swear that it shall not be obeyed ; and we do this 
not because Congress have no right to pass such 
laws— this we do not allege — but because they have 
passed them with improper views." 

Turning to a con si deration of South Carolina's 
threat to withdraw from the Union if her right to 
nullify obnoxious laws was denied, the Proclamation 
insisted that the United States was a government, 
not a league ; that all the people were represented 
in it, and that it operated directly on the people in- 
dividually and not through the states ; and that a 
state, never having as a state formed any league, 
did not have the right to secede, since to do so 
would not break a league but destroy the unity of a 



THE OKDINANCE 167 

nation. Secession as a revolutionary act might be 
justified in case of extreme oppression, but to call it 
a constitutional right was only to deceive those who 
would pause before entering upon a revolution, and 
who were not aware of the pains they would suffer 
if an attempted revolution should fail. The states 
had not retained their entire sovereignty. Among 
other powers, they had given to the nation the right 
to punish treason against the United States. Trea- 
son was an offense against sovereignty and sovereignty 
must reside with the power to punish it. Secession 
was also an infringement upon the rights of other 
states, and in self-defense they could not permit it. 
Then the President appealed to the people of 
South Carolina: "Fellow-citizens of my native 
state, let me not only admonish you, as the first 
magistrate of our common country, not to incur the 
penalty of its laws, but use the influence that a 
father would over his children whom he saw rush- 
ing to certain ruin. In that paternal language, 
with that paternal feeling, let me tell you, my 
countrymen, that you are deluded by men who are 
either deceived themselves or wish to deceive you. 
Mark under what pretenses you have been led on to 
the brink of insurrection and treason on which you 
stand. . . . Eloquent appeals to your passions, 
to your state pride, to your native courage, to your 
real sense of injury, were used to prepare you for 
the period when the mask which concealed the 
hideous features of disunion should be taken off. It 
fell, and you were made to look with complacency 



168 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

on objects which not long since you would have re- 
garded with horror. Look back to the arts which 
have brought you to this state ; look forward to the 
consequences to which it must inevitably lead 1 
Look back to what was first told you as an induce- 
ment to enter into this dangerous course. The 
great political truth was repeated to you that you 
had the revolutionary right of resisting all laws 
that were palpably unconstitutional aud intolerably 
oppressive. It was added that the right to nullify 
a law rested on the same principle, but that it was 
a peaceable remedy." 

The protective principle at one time had been 
advocated by some of the very men who were 
now leaders in South Carolina. How, then, could 
these men say that laws based upon that principle 
were palpably unconstitutional ! Carolinians were 
reminded that the great men of their state had done 
much to make the Union which their descendants 
seemed so anxious to destroy. ' ' For what, mistaken 
men I For what do you throw away these inesti- 
mable blessings ? . . . For the dream of a sep- 
arate independence— a dream interrupted by bloody 
conflicts with your neighbors and a vile dependence 
on a foreign power. ' ' Let them reflect whether they 
would, even if independent, be free from civil dis- 
sension ; but an attempt at secession could and 
would not succeed, as the President was sworn to 
execute the laws and intended to do so. "Disunion," 
he said, " by armed force is treason. Are you really 
ready to incur its guilt ? If you are, on the heads 



THE OEDINANCE 169 

of the instigators of the act be the dreadful conse- 
quences ; on their heads be the dishonor, but on 
yours must fall the punishment." They were ad- 
vised to retrace their steps: "Snatch from the 
archives of your state the disorganizing edict of its 
convention ; bid its members to reassemble and pro- 
mulgate the decided expressions of your will to re- 
main in the path which alone can conduct you to 
safety, prosperity, and honor. Tell them that com- 
pared to disunion all other evils are light, because 
that brings with it an accumulation of all. Declare 
that you will never take the field, unless the star- 
spangled banner of your country shall float over 
you ; that you will not be stigmatized when dead, 
and dishonored and scorned while you live, as the 
authors of the first attack on the Constitution of 
your country. Its destroyers you cannot be. You 
may disturb its peace, you may interrupt the course 
of its prosperity, you may cloud its reputation for 
stability; but its tranquillity will be restored, its 
prosperity will return, and the stain upon its na- 
tional character will be transferred and remain an 
eternal blot on the memory of those who caused the 
disorder." 

The Proclamation closed with an appeal to the 
people of the United States for support in the exe- 
cution of the laws and the preservation of the Union, 
and with a solemn prayer to Heaven to let the ene- 
mies of the republic see their folly before they 
should feel the miseries of civil strife. 



CHAPTEE XII 

A MAN WITH A MISSION 

Early on the morning of December 17th, the 
Proclamation reached Columbia, and as soon as it 
was read, the sober-minded realized, more fully than 
before, that they were facing a situation, the full 
gravity of which could not well be exaggerated. 
They could not draw back, however, even if they 
would, for they were pushed forward by popular 
feeling which they could not check. 

The legislature promptly called upon Governor 
Hayne to reply to the Proclamation, and passed 
resolutions of dissent to it. One resolution was, 
'' that the primary and paramount allegiance of the 
citizens of this state, native or adopted, is of right 
due to this state ; " another asserted the right of se- 
cession, and was passed by a vote of ninety-four 
to seven in the House and twenty-seven to five in 
the Senate. Hayne's counter proclamation ap- 
peared in two days' time ; but it bore no evi- 
dence of hasty composition, being, in fact, an 
able document, well thought out, and, the nulli- 
fiers were convinced, a greater than the procla- 
mation it answered. It avowed devotion to the 
Union and the Constitution, but a determination 
to resist any attempt of the President to enforce 
the tariff laws. It was not intemperate in tone, 



A MAN WITH A MISSION 171 

and parts of it were calculated to dampen the ardor 
of the people. South Carolina, it said, might be 
crushed as Poland had been, but she would have the 
proud consciousness of having done her duty. Now, 
no people likes to look forward to the certainty of 
being crushed, even as a consequence of doing its 
duty, and these two proclamations, the one threat- 
ening and the other admitting the threatener's 
power, offered anything but an agreeable prospect. 

MacDuffie, however, insisted that the ordinance 
should go into effect so that the world should see it 
was a peaceable remedy. He wrote privately on 
December 26, 1832 : 

"Unless General Jackson announces war upon the 
state, by an indiscriminate attack upon men, 
women and children, there can be no necessary vio- 
lence used ; for the state will proceed calmly on in 
the civil tribunals, without paying the slightest at- 
tention to the military parade or to the mad ravings 
of this driveling old dotard." ' 

The "driveling old dotard" had been for some 
time in confidential communication with Poinsett 
and other Unionists. He had reinforced the mili- 
tary posts in and about Charleston, and he sent 
General Winfield Scott to command them. Scott 
put himself in touch with the leading friends of the 
Union in South Carolina and followed the plans they 
advised, which did not include the use of force if it 
could possibly be avoided. But Hayne, as gover- 
nor of the state, had a harder task than Scott, for he 

1 Crall6 MSS. 



172 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

must keep the nullification forces embodied and 
permit recruiting to go on, while he restrained them 
from action. He was haunted by the fear that at 
any moment there might be an armed collision be- 
tween nullifiers and Unionists, when civil war 
would certainly ensue. He managed the situation 
with skill and steadfastness of purpose, and after 
tranquillity was restored, it was agreed by both 
parties that the state owed him a great debt of grat- 
itude. For example, wheu the excitement was at 
its height, he was told that a company of Unionists 
was about to seize a vessel which had just arrived 
in Charleston harbor laden with arms for the state ; 
but he refused to order out a company of troops to 
protect it, knowing that their appearance would 
lead to hostilities and bloodshed. It was the im- 
mediate danger of conflict with the Unionists which 
impressed the nullifiers more than any other, and 
they knew that while the Unionists were only a mi- 
nority, they would never yield their position. 

They furnished proof of what their attitude was 
in the Union convention which met in Columbia 
immediately after the nullification convention had 
adjourned, and while the legislature was in session. 
It was attended by about 180 representative men. 
Eandell Hunt, a young lawyer and scholar from 
Charleston, epitomized the attitude of his party in 
three resolutions : 

"That the Union party acknowledges no alle- 
giance to any government except that of the United 
States. 



A MAN WITH A MISSION 173 

' ' That in ref erring this resolution to the general 
committee, they be instructed to inquire whether 
it is not expedient to give a military organization 
to the Union party throughout the state. 

"Whether it will not be necessary to call in the 
assistance of the general government for maintaining 
the laws of the United States against the arbitrary 
violence which is threatened by the late convention." 

Poinsett read a letter from Jackson, in which he 
said that if Hayne raised an army, it would be 
treason. Memminger, afterward Secretary of the 
Treasury of the Confederacy, submitted a plan of de- 
fensive military organization which was adopted. 
Poinsett was selected as commander-in-chief and 
division commanders were named for the different 
sections of the state, Robert Cunningham, Calhoun's 
law pupil, being assigned to the Pendleton district. 
Petigru delivered one of his strongest speeches, and 
appropriate resolutions were adopted. One pointed 
scornfully to the provisions being made by the state 
authorities for a standing army, and said it could 
not be pretended that such an army would be able 
to protect the state from the coercive power of the 
United States. Its purpose must be, therefore, to 
tyrannize over Carolina Unionists. 

The people seemed to think civil war was upon 
them. The Greenville Mountaineer said that the 
people of that section, which was near Calhoun's 
home, were ready at a moment's warning to march 
in defense of the natioual authority. A nullification 
lady wrote to her husband in the legislature : 



174 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

"Our castle will be well filled in case of an at- 
tack. I have offered rooms to all our nearest friends. 
. . . Stand by your country and I will never de- 
sert you." 

A lady in Charleston, Mrs. S. Gilman, whose hus- 
band, a clergyman, had written a patriotic ode for 
the Union celebration of July 4, 1831, and to whom, 
in consequence, his admirers had presented a large 
silver vase, wrote to her sister in Boston, January 
17, 1833 : 

"Everything now depends on Congress, for if 
they have any excuse, I think the state rights party 
would draw back. . . . Should serious evils 
arise, we may send on our girls and the Union vase, 
but we shall stay ourselves at the South as long as 
we can do good ; every moment, however, feeling 
how grateful Ave ought to be, that we have arms at 
the North open to receive us." 

Some months later, on December 17, 1833, she 
wrote again : 

"To think, Louisa, that we should live to see a 
civil war ! Our nullifiers are just as determined 
and the men are just as conscientious as the Whigs 
of '76. . . . Families are sadly divided. Mr. 
Webb, for instance, who is a Union man, an officer 
in the State Bank, will have to take the test oath. 
Thomas Webb, his son, is a nullifier, an officer in a 
new corps of artillery, got up for the express pur- 
pose of defending the state. They do not speak on 
politics to each other. ' I hope,' said Mr. Webb 
mournfully, the other day, ' if they drive me from 



A MAN WITH A MISSION 175 

South Carolina, they will give the fruits of my la- 
bors to my sou.' " ' 

Men like Mr. Webb and Eandell Hunt would 
have to be driven from the state if the nullifiers 
were to carry out their plans. As loug as they 
were there, they stood in the way to obstruct the 
proceedings of the nullification party and weaken 
the force of the movement outside of the state, by 
showing that the state was divided against itself on 
the subject. 

While the newspapers were filled with notices of 
the enrollment of volunteers, and the blue cockade 
with a palmetto button which the nullifiers had 
adopted as a badge was being mounted on all sides, 
Calhoun was performing his allotted task at Wash- 
ington. It was in a crisis of this kind that his tal- 
ents were best displayed, and he rose to meet a 
great occasion. The young nationalist who had 
taken his place in the front rank in Congress and 
led the country into the War of 1812 with so much 
impetuous dash, had become in maturity cool, re- 
sourceful, sure of himself, and skilled in the use of 
his powers. He was certain of the justice of his 
cause, and it was his own. It had always lurked 
in the background of state sovereignty, but he had 
brought it forward into the light. He had not in- 
spired nor even participated in the movement which 
was behind it, until it was fully formed and was on 
its way in auother direction ; but it was he who had 

1 Family papers of the late Mrs. Frauds J. Lippitt, of 
Washington. 



176 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

led the movement into nullification ; it was he who 
had expounded the doctrine and erected it into a 
completed theory of government. He believed in 
it as a zealot believes in a religion. He had found 
his mission on earth ; it was to preach the gospel of 
nullification. 

He was now fifty years old and his health was 
still good. His dark brown hair was streaked with 
white aud he wore it brushed straight back, so that 
it fell thickly about his temples and ears, framing his 
high massive forehead. From underneath his heavy 
eyebrows shone the wonderful gray eyes, changing 
with his changing emotions,— at times deepening 
into gloom, at times burning with enthusiasm, and 
at times beaming with kindness. His nose was 
prominent and straight, and his mouth large, with 
compressed lips which smiled readily in private in- 
tercom se, though he seldom laughed. His neck 
was long and thin and his frame generous of bone 
but spare of flesh. His chest had already shown 
signs of weakness, and to protect it he wore under 
his clothing a large sheet of paper. His figure was 
erect and his movements were deliberate. His 
hands were thin and small. In conversation, he 
gesticulated little, and in public speaking only with 
his right hand. His foot was long and flat and he 
wore boots. He was dressed on all ordinary occa- 
sions in a full suit of black broadcloth, with a high 
black stock and a tall beaver hat. To spectators 
who gazed upon him from the Senate gallery, he 
gave the impression of a man of sombre nature, but 



A MAN WITH A MISSION 177 

in private life he was not an unhappy man. He 
was benignant and even genial ; he loved his fel- 
low man and took the trouble to be agreeable and 
pleasant to him ; he was fond of women's society 
and always noticed children. He drew others into 
conversation easily, but among men he was becom- 
ing a bad listener. Being one who was consumed by 
a faith, he felt that he must preach it to make the 
wavering embrace it, to convert the unbelieving, 
and to keep the faithful steadfast. When he talked 
upon the subject of constitutional construction — 
and he talked upon it whenever he could— he 
preached. He would pause if the listener replied, 
but not having observed what the latter said, would 
proceed with his discourse, his train of thought not 
having been disturbed. 

When he rose in the Senate chamber to speak, 
he was heard in debate for the first time in fifteen 
years. How lonely his position was ! As Henry 
Clay said, "Not a voice beyond the single state of 
South Carolina had been heard in favor of the prin- 
ciple of nullification ; " and it was not even a 
united voice there. James Madison, the patriarch, 
father of the Constitution, roused from his retire- 
ment, and came forward to say that the Eesolutions 
of 1799 contained no seed to produce this noxious 
plant ; Jefferson's friends swore that it was not a 
legitimate growth from the Kentucky Eesolutions ; 
and here was Edward Livingston, who thirty years 
before had uttered extreme sentiments against the 
power of Congress to enact the Alien and Sedition 



178 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

Laws, now writing down nullification as treason. 
But the great nullifier stood steadfast for what lie 
was convinced was the right, and in Congress the 
tone toward him was one of respect for liis opinions 
and belief in his sincerity. From people outside, 
however, he received galling evidence that many of 
them looked upon him with abhorrence. Threat- 
ening anonymous letters were in his mail ; one con- 
tained a picture of a gallows with a coffin lying at 
the foot ; another a piece of hemp as a reminder of 
the hangman's rope. 

On January lGth Jackson laid before Congress full 
information concerning events in South Carolina, 
sending copies of the ordinance of nullification and 
the consequent documents, including Hayne's proc- 
lamation and the acts of the legislature to carry the 
ordinance into effect. The accompanying mes- 
sage told of the military plans which were being 
made by the state to resist the revenue laws, and 
the President admitted that he had not supposed 
that it would so soon proceed to extreme measures. 
As the ordinance of nullification was to go into ef- 
fect on February 1st, he asked that additional au- 
thority be conferred upon him at once to enforce the 
tariff laws. He privately informed Poinsett, how- 
ever, that if Congress failed to act upon his recom- 
mendation, he would, immediately upon hearing of 
any assemblage in South Carolina to oppose the 
government of the United States, order into the field 
a sufficient force to arrest the leaders and hand them 
over to the judiciary. If necessary, he said, he was 



A MAN WITH A MISSION 179 

prepared to inarch 200,000 meu into the state. He 
constantly repeated that the Federal government 
was ready to cooperate with the Unionists and 
Mould act on their initiative. 

On the day Jackson's message was received in the 
Senate, Calhoun spoke in deprecation of the ideas 
which it conveyed. There was not a shadow of 
foundation, he said, for the statement that South 
Carolina had done anything in hostility to the 
Union. Military preparations were being made 
solely to defend the state against the Federal forces 
which had been recently gathered at Augusta, Ga., 
on the border, and at Charleston. This was not all 
the truth, for Calhoun knew that the nullifiers had 
raised an army to operate against the Unionists, as 
well as to defend the state against the Federal forces. 

On January 21st a bill was introduced to enable 
the President, whenever the administration of the 
revenue laws might be obstructed, to employ force 
to execute them, and to extend the jurisdiction of 
Federal courts to cases arising under them. This 
became known as the " Force Bill." The day after 
it was presented, Calhoun offered three resolutions : 

(1) That the states were parties to the Constitu- 
tion and the Union as separate sovereignties ; 

(2) That they had delegated certain defined 
powers and no more to the Federal government, and 
when powers not delegated were exercised, the acts 
were null and void, the judges of the infraction be- 
ing the parties to the compact ; 

(3) That the idea that the people of the United 



180 JOHN C. CALHOUN 



States formed a nation was a present and an histor- 
ical fallacy. 

Perhaps on the direct question, a majority of the 
Senate would have been obliged to endorse these res- 
olutions, and if Calhoun could have confined the de- 
bate to them, he might have stood a chance of lead- 
ing on to an admission of the right of nullification 
as a corollary ; but his state rights colleagues would 
not let him control the situation, and Mangum of 
North Carolina offered as a substitute, a simple pro- 
nouncement that Congress had power to make tariff 
laws and South Carolina no right to resist them. 
With Calhoun's and Mangum' s resolutions and the 
Force Bill as texts, the debate proceeded, the field 
against Calhoun. Although Tyler of Virginia, 
Bibb of Kentucky, and Mangum and Brown of North 
Carolina opposed the Force Bill, they gave him no 
other support. While the discussion was in full 
progress, on February 12th Henry Clay arose to ask 
permission to introduce a bill to modify the tariff, 
and when Calhoun announced that he would vote for 
the permission, in the hope that a way was opening 
to bring to an end the deplorable agitation then dis- 
tracting the country, there was tumultuous applause 
in the galleries, for it was realized that an arrange- 
ment had been reached for a compromise which 
would save the Federal government from the neces- 
sity of subduing a state by force of arms. Hardly 
any one wanted to invade South Carolina by an 
army. Nearly everybody was anxious to find a 
way of keeping her in the Union as a loyal state, 



A MAN WITH A MISSION 181 

instead of turning her into a disloyal conquered 
province. 

On February 15th, Calhoun began the most impor- 
tant speech that he had ever made, lasting for two 
hours. It was a supreme effort and fulfilled the ut- 
most hopes of his followers. He spoke for his state 
with an air of confident authority, and in defending 
her defended himself. South Carolina, he said, had 
not claimed a right to annul the Constitution ; nor 
to resist laws made in pursuance of the Constitution, 
but those made without its authority. She claimed 
no right to judge of the delegated powers of the 
Constitution, but of the powers which were ex- 
pressly reserved to the respective states. The res- 
ervation was against the United States, and ex- 
tended, of course, to the judiciary, as well as to the 
other departments of government. He defended 
himself from the charge of having been a protec- 
tionist in 1816. The tariff then adopted had been 
primarily a revenue measure, framed with reference 
to the need of reducing the public debt. It had in 
it, he admitted, two capital errors — too low a duty 
had been put on iron, which had proved injurious 
to Pennsylvania, the chief iron-producing state, aud 
caused a reaction that had thrown it decidedly on 
the side of a protective policy ; and too high a duty 
had been put on coarse cottons, which had intro- 
duced the minimum principle. Here the principle 
of protection had been recognized, and he blamed 
himself for having accepted it, his excuse being that 
the doctrine was then new, and his attention had 



182 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

been engrossed by the question of the currency, 
which was especially in his charge. He said, how- 
ever, that his chief speech iu favor of the tariff had 
been impromptu, and made at the request of his 
friend, Samuel D. Ingham, without previous prepa- 
ration. The bill was constitutional and he pressed 
into service all arguments to show its beneficial 
operations, without taking into consideration 
whether the subject to which the arguments referred 
was within the Constitution or not. By this act 
had he committed himself to the system of oppres- 
sion which had since enriched one portion of the 
country at the expense of the other ? 

South Carolina had never ceased to hope that 
Congress would afford relief from the oppression of 
subsequent tariff acts till the law of 1828 showed 
that it was idle to hope longer. Then she turned 
her eyes for a final remedy to her reserved powers, 
and commenced an inquiry into their nature and ex- 
tent and the means of resistance which they afforded 
against the encroachments of the general govern- 
ment. He accepted, as applying to himself, that 
part of the President's proclamation intimating 
that the nullification leaders were actuated in 
their course by disappointed ambition, and repelled 
the charge, pointing to his casting vote in the Sen- 
ate against the tariff bill of 1827. His political for- 
tunes had been much injured by that vote which he 
could easily have avoided. One sentence in the speech 
deserves particular attention. We have seen that 
Calhoun believed that, so soon as the surplus revenue 



A MAN WITH A MISSION 183 

began to be distributed, the states would all favor 
the tariff. That they were looking forward to such 
a distribution, he said, was now indicated by the 
"extraordinary movements which took place at the 
last session in the Virginia legislature, in which the 
whole South is vitally interested. It is impossible 
to believe," he continued, "that that state could 
seriously have thought of effecting the scheme to 
which I allude by her own resources, without pow- 
erful aid from the general government." 

The "extraordinary movements" to which he 
referred were the efforts in behalf of the coloni- 
zation society's work. This was the only allusion 
that he made at this time to the subject of slavery. 
The rest of his speech followed the familiar consti- 
tutional ground and he covered it with relentless 
completeness and impeccable logic. 

So far as the defense of his consistency went, it 
was lame. The tariff of 1816 was quite different 
from the subsequent laws ; but Calhoun, not only 
once but on several occasions, when the bill of 1816 
was pending, pronounced himself a protectionist, 
and he had thereafter received without protest the 
praise of protectionists, and had been enrolled as 
one of them. As for the change in his constitutional 
views, he spoke of himself when he referred to the 
inquiry his state had made into the reserved powers 
in search of means of escaping from oppressive laws. 
The explanation was frank and rendered further 
apology unnecessary. He had not thought ahead of 
the times nor beyond his surroundings. 



184 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

Daniel Webster, who now replied to the constitu- 
tional arguments in the speech, was in no better sit- 
uation than Calhoun, so far as consistency went ; 
for in 1816, when the latter was leading the House 
as a nationalist, he was one of the group of unpa- 
triotic sectionalists who opposed the Southerner's 
course. 

The forensic duel which took place between Web- 
ster and Calhoun was watched with intense interest, 
and the hitter's friends were perfect! y satisfied that 
he was the victor. John Randolph, of Eoanoke, 
sat in the Senate when the great nullifier was reply- 
ing to his opponent, and a hat on the desk in front 
of him interfering with his view, exclaimed, " Take 
away that hat. I want to see Webster die muscle 
by muscle ! " On the other hand, Andrew Jackson 
wrote privately to Poinsett that Calhoun's speech 
had been a perfect failure and that Webster had 
handled him like a child. A good many people, he 
added, thought Calhoun to be demented. The sen- 
ators did not believe this, however, and his address 
raised him in the estimation of his foes as well as 
his friends, for he spoke with calmness and dignity, 
and with greater force than any man among them. 

In the House the contest had been even more one- 
sided, since both South Carolina senators were nulli- 
fiers, whereas among the nine Carolina representa- 
tives four were Union men ; — William Drayton of 
Charleston, Thomas E. Mitchell of Georgetown, 
James Blair of Lynch wood, and Calhoun's fast 
friend at college, John M. Felder, of Orangeburg. 



A MAN WITH A MISSION 185 

All of these but Felder had voted for the Force Bill. 
Blair in his speech insisted that this measure should 
pass, in order that the Federal government might 
show that it supported the Carolina Unionists. He 
arraigned the milliners, but declared that those who 
denied the right of nullification and upheld the right 
of secession, occupied an untenable position. For 
himself he denied both with equal earnestness. 

When the compromise tariff bill came before the 
House, not all of the South Carolina Unionists were 
willing to accept it, and sentiment in the state was 
generally against such a course. "The example 
would be Mai," said the Charleston Patriot,— "the 
precedent destructive of all good government, if 
Congress should legislate with an edict of nullifica- 
tion suspended over their heads." In Congress, 
however, there was never a doubt of the passage of 
the bill, except for a brief period, when, in the 
course of the debate, John Quincy Adams introduced 
the subject of slavery. By a play upon words he 
contended that the protection which Northern labor 
enjoyed from the tariff was no greater than the pro- 
tection slavery enjoyed under Federal laws. Will- 
iam Drayton replied in a fury of rage, and for a 
time the debate threatened to go in a direction where 
all Southerners would be compelled to stand together. 
The House, however, refused to be driven into a 
discussion of the slavery question, and the tariff bill 
was passed on February 26th, just after the Force 
Bill. 

Now, as soon as the Force Bill became a law, 



186 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

South Carolina, according to her formally announced 
plan, should have left the Union. The ordinance 
of nullification had declared that the passage of any 
act looking to the coercion of the state would be in- 
consistent with her remaining in the Union, and 
that she would at once proceed to form a separate 
government. Under the requirements of the ordi- 
nance, the state should have been in full enjoyment 
of the actual workings of nullification since Feb- 
ruary 1st, and it was now March 1st, and the ordinance 
had not been put into effect. Was it then only a 
brutum fulmen, and had the leaders never really ex- 
pected it to go into operation 1 Certainly, Calhoun 
did not now want to see his theory tried, and ad- 
vised that the date be postponed. There had been 
an informal meeting of nullification leaders, includ- 
ing Hamilton, the president of the nullification con- 
vention, on January 21st, at Charleston, where it 
was agreed to postpone the day upon which the or- 
dinance should go into effect. The Unionists 
charged that the conclusion had been reached after 
an inspection of the military preparations of the 
general government ; but apart from the evident 
fact that peaceable nullification would be impossible, 
it would have been folly not to have waited to see 
what Congress would do in response to the demands 
of the state. 

Clay's compromise tariff bill had been introduced 
after a full understanding had been reached with 
Calhoun. In accepting the bill, he did no violence 
to his principles ; for he had always declared that 



A MAN WITH A MISSION 187 

lie had no idea of suddenly withdrawing all protec- 
tion from industries which protection had called into 
being. Clay and Calhoun having agreed on the 
bill, it was comparatively easy to pass it through 
Congress ; but it was a different matter to cause 
South Carolina to accept the compromise and repeal 
her ordinance of nullification. The law retained the 
principle of protection and South Carolina had de- 
manded its abandonment ; but it provided for a 
gradual reduction of duties to the eventual point of 
almost free trade. 



CHAPTER XIII 

VICTORY TOO COMPLETE 

Calhoun knew that the result of the session of 
Congress would be received with anything but satis- 
faction by the people at home. There was a milder 
tariff bill partially to placate them ; but there was a 
Force Bill wholly to irritate them, and it was doubt- 
ful if they could be persuaded to swallow a dose in 
which the bitter so much predominated over the 
sweet. Important influences, however, had been 
at work to bring them to an accommodating spirit. 

Of all the states which passed resolutions against 
nullification, only Virginia did anything to keep 
South Carolina from putting the theory into effect. 
On January 26, 1833, iu spite of the efforts of South 
Carolina nulli tiers to prevent such action, the legis- 
lature of Virginia adopted resolutions urging her to 
rescind the ordinance of nullification, or at least sus- 
pend its operations till the close of the session of 
Congress. At the same time Congress was asked to 
amend the tariff. The resolutions declared devotion 
to the doctrine of state sovereignty, as laid down in 
the Resolutions of 1799, which, they said, sanctioned 
neither nullification, nor all of the principles an- 
nounced iu the President's proclamation against it. 
A commissioner was selected to present them to the 



VICTOEY TOO COMPLETE 189 

state, and tender his friendly offices of mediation be- 
tween the state and the Federal government. Benja- 
min Watkins Leigh was named for the unusual serv- 
ice. He was received, at Columbia, by Governor 
Hayne as though he were a friendly legate from one 
independent sovereignty to another, but, while his 
mission was unprecedented in character, it was not 
forbidden by Federal law, and undoubtedly had a 
beneficial influence. 

Hamilton called a second meeting of the conven- 
tion for March 11th, the immediate purpose being 
to consider the proposals of Virginia and the com- 
promise tariff bill. Everything depended upon the 
outcome of this meeting, and Calhoun felt it impera- 
tive that he should be present. If the convention 
should reject the tariff bill, as it was freely predicted 
it would, the situation would be rendered hopeless. 

Congress adjourned on March 4th, only one week 
before the convention was to meet, and the distance 
between Washington and Columbia was more than 
400 miles. It was the season of the year when the 
bad roads were at their worst, and an exceptionally 
cold winter had made them more impassable than 
usual. Accidents in traveling were then so frequent 
that it was always hard even to approximate how 
long a long journey would take. When Calhoun 
left Washington, the Potomac Eiver was still 
frozen over, and there were no signs of spring. 
Crossing to Alexandria, he took the stage for 
the South, but the heavy vehicle made such slow 
progress that he soon abandoned it, and rode 



190 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

in open mail-carts night and day, exposed to 
the inclement weather and indifferent to its effect 
upon him. 

He arrived in Columbia the day after the conven- 
tion had assembled, but before it had taken any 
action. As soon as it was called to order by Ham- 
ilton, Hayne was elected to preside, according to 
the plau formulated at the first session that the gov- 
ernor should be the president. On March 13th, a 
motion was made to have a committee wait upon the 
senators and representatives in Congress in the city 
and obtain from them a true account of the late pro- 
ceedings at Washington. Calhoun was severely 
criticized for supporting the compromise tariff, and 
the motion was carried by a majority of only three 
votes. He was invited to take a seat in the conven- 
tion, where the members remarked upon his hag- 
gard face and worn appearance caused by his hard 
journey and the weight of his anxiety. Although 
he did not speak, he influenced the proceedings by 
counsel with others, and what was done was in the 
main satisfactory to him. Stephen D. Miller, his 
colleague in the Senate, made a full explanation of 
events in Congress and urged an acceptance of the 
compromise. A committee of twenty-one brought 
in a report recommending this course and the pas- 
sage of a resolution repealing the ordinance of nulli- 
fication. There followed a hot debate, during which 
Eobert Barnwell Ehett defied any man in the con- 
vention to put his hand upon his heart and say he 
loved the Union. Immediately an old nullifier 



VICTOEY TOO COMPLETE 191 

named Warren, who bad lost a leg in the Eevolu- 
tionary War, arose and declared that he had fought 
and bled for the Union, and that for one he loved 
it. Hamilton, Eobert Barnwell and others spoke 
in deprecation of Ehett's remarks. The leaders 
were nearly all against him as were a majority of 
the delegates. They were weary of the strife, and 
wished for a restoration of harmony. So did the 
Unionist members. They had come to this second 
convention to see the ordinance of nullification 
rescinded, and they were willing to meet their oppo- 
nents half-way. But a large number of the dele- 
gates were not disposed to let the occasion pass 
without dealing out punishment to a minority which 
bad so persistently defied them and thwarted them. 
Tnrnbull, the author of "The Crisis," made a speech 
which the Unionists thought was worthy of a pitiless 
tyrant ; John Lyde Wilson, an ex-governor of the 
state, also attacked them savagely, and Chancellor 
Harper, who had many friends in the group, 
shocked them by saying that they had been actuated 
by a rebellious spirit, which few states would have 
tolerated. Calhoun's friends and lieutenants did 
not stand with these extremists. His niece's hus- 
band, Armistead Burt ; his colleague in the Senate, 
Stephen D. Miller ; and his faithful follower, Hamil- 
ton, made every effort to convince the Unionists 
that Tnrnbull and Harper did not voice the senti- 
ments of the majority of the nullifiers. 

The Unionists were justified in doubting the cor- 
rectness of these assurances, when they saw that 



192 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

one of the ordinances reported to the convention 
contained a clause requiring every person who 
should hold office to take an oath of allegiance to 
the state and to abjure all other allegiance. 

Turnbull had written this clause, and it came near 
wrecking everything. The debate was so acrimoni- 
ous that physical strife was avoided only by a 
timely adjournment. The opposition was strong 
enough, however, to prevent the convention from 
embodying the oath in the ordinance, but allegiance 
was thus defined : u That the allegiance of the 
citizens of this state, while they continue such, is 
due to the said state ; and that obedience only, and 
not allegiance, is due by them to any other power 
or authority, to whom a control over them has 
been, or may be delegated by the state." The 
General Assembly was authorized to provide a 
suitable oath binding officers and citizens of the 
state to this form of allegiance. 

This was bad enough, and the convention 
adopted it by a majority of only six votes— seventy- 
nine to seventy -three. It formed a part of the 
ordinance nullifying the Force Bill which was 
passed by a large vote, although several leading- 
delegates thought it a mistake to nullify the 
bill. Miller said truly that it would have been 
better merely to protest against the measure, 
because then several Southern states would support 
South Carolina-, whereas in nullifying it she must 
stand alone ; and MacDuffie, who was not always 
respectful toward nullification, remarked pri- 



VICTORY TOO COMPLETE 193 

vately, ' ' I should like to see you uullify the military 
provisious of that bill ! " 

Having adopted a courteous reply to the address 
of Virginia, in which it was insisted that South 
Carolina had not gone beyond the position sanc- 
tioned by the Resolutions of 1799, the convention 
dissolved on March 18th, after a session of one week. 

The ordinances were signed only by the president, 
and not, as in the case of the main ordinance of nul- 
lification, by all the members. In fact, the second 
convention lacked the pathetic dignity which had 
characterized the proceedings of the first meeting. 
The members marching on the road to certain 
danger presented a finer appearance than when 
they were taking steps to put their lives and 
fortunes in safety again. They quarreled among 
themselves ; no plan of concerted action had been 
carefully arranged for them, and no one felt pride 
in the course which they followed. They mani- 
fested an uneasy consciousness of diminishing im- 
portance. South Carolina accepting a compromise 
was not like South Carolina defying the nation ; it 
was an anti-climax. 

This second convention, however, did as much 
harm to the state as it well could by adopting 
the ordinance defining allegiance. If the legislature 
should prescribe an oath in full accord with the 
spirit of this ordinance, no Unionist would will- 
ingly remain in the state, for he would be obliged 
to forswear allegiance to the United States. What 
was become of that part of Calhoun's theory of 



194 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

government, in which he showed how the majority 
mast respect the rights of the minority if despotism 
were to be avoided, and that no far-reaching measure 
of importance should be put iuto effect unless the 
minority concurred 1 ? Although the prospect of a test 
oath was unbearable to the Unionists and disliked 
by many nullifiers, a ruthless majority was deter- 
mined to force it upon the people. Accordingly, 
the legislature passed a law at the December, 1833, 
session, requiring all officers of the militia to take 
an oath of allegiance simply to the state of South 
Carolina. But the constitution of the state pro- 
vided that all persons chosen for any office of trust 
should take an oath to "preserve, protect and de- 
feud the Constitution of this state, and of the United 
States" ; so a case was made up to test the new 
oath in the courts. 1 It came finally before the 
Court of Appeals in March, 1834, and the arguments 
of counsel took a wide range, coA r ering the familiar 
ground of state or Federal supremacy. They con- 
stitute, also, a most exhaustive and illuminating 
discussion of the true meaning of allegiance. 
Grimke and Petigru argued against the constitution- 
ality of the oath, the former's plea especially be- 
ing one of extraordinary fullness and power ; and, 
in spite of popular clamor in favor of the oath, 
the court decided that it was unconstitutional, the 
concurring judges being John Benton O'Neil and 
David Johnson, both well-known Unionists, and the 
dissenting judge, William Harper. 

1 It is reported in 2 Hill's Reports. 



VICTOEY TOO COMPLETE 195 

Calhoun approved of the test oath. He held his 
faith too strongly not to be unjust toward those 
who denied it. As soon as the Court of Appeals 
had given its opinion, he advised his followers to 
work for the election of a two-thirds majority of 
the next legislature, so that the decision might be 
overcome by amending the Constitution. In due 
course the amendment was adopted, but it was a 
compromise, the form finally agreed upon requiring 
an oath to bear "true allegiance" to the state, and 
to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution 
of the state, and of the United States." Both 
Unionists and nullifiers, by applying opposing 
definitions to the meaning of the words " true 
allegiance," could take this oath. The same legis- 
lature which evolved it, abolished the Court of 
Appeals in resentment at the decision it had 
rendered. 

The nullification incident might now be said to be 
closed. So far as the state was concerned, Cal- 
houn's victory was complete, and his opponents 
were crushed almost to the point of annihilation. 
The victory was too complete, for it was followed 
by the peace of death, and almost unanimity of 
public opinion ; nor was there ever again a healthy 
stimulus of active difference of opinion and robust 
opposition to the ruling party in South Carolina. 
A number of the strongest minds who had opposed 
Calhoun and would have kept up the fight against 
his tenets and disputed his control, left the state 
because of the tyrannical course pursued by his 



196 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

party. Only a few of these refugees need be 
mentioned. Judge William Smith went to Ala- 
bama, where, to his dying day, the very name of 
Calhoun was hateful to him. Thomas Williams, 
his most devoted lieutenant in the Carolina legis- 
lature, accompanied him. William Drayton re- 
moved to Philadelphia. Theodore Gaillard Hunt 
and Eandell Hunt went to New Orleans, where 
they continued the fight against Calhoimism. 
Death fortuitously removed several of the 
Unionists. The intrepid Grimke died while he 
was on a visit to his brother in Ohio in 1S34, soon 
after he had won the test oath case, and Judge 
William Johnson died in Brooklyn the same year. 
The pitiful remnant of the Union party which was 
left made 110 real resistance to the onward march of 
triumphant Calhounism. Petrigru returned to the 
practice of his profession and appeared no more in 
the political field. Poinsett and Legare tried to 
ignore the visible consequences of the struggle. 
Daniel E. Huger, seeing no present dauger of dis- 
union, drifted with the tide which followed Cal- 
houn. This became a deep, smooth-no wiug stream 
sweeping on to the sea of secession, and nullification 
itself became engulfed in the greater doctrine. A 
few years after the nullification incident, William 
C. Preston, Calhoun's colleague in the Senate and 
an admirer of Henry Clay, endeavored to lead the 
state over to the Whigs, but the effort failed 
signally, and Calhoun's sway was never afterward 
seriously disturbed. 



VICTOEY TOO COMPLETE 197 

His victory was a costly oue. He stood forth with 
fatal prominence ; and as the man loomed larger, the 
state looked smaller. As his prestige increased, 
hers diminished, and the date of his undisputed 
ascendeucy is the date when she lost, never to re- 
gain it, the unique position of prominence and im- 
portance on the American continent which had been 
hers even from colonial times. Calhoun became 
more and more a force to be reckoned with in na- 
tional affairs, and the state of less and less account. 
Her public men were no longer conspicuous. So 
absolutely were all eyes turned on him that others 
were not seen at all, unless they were his satellites. 



CHAPTEE XIY 

CURBING ANDREW JACKSON 

We now approach the third of the important 
phases of Calhoun's career, the other two being his 
service in the House of Eepresentatives and his 
identification with South Carolina's resistance of the 
tariff. As Secretary of War and as Vice-President, 
no situations had been presented in which he could 
so distinguish himself as to acquire a place in his- 
tory, and if he had not been a representative and a 
senator, he would not now be remembered. The 
nullification movement was, undoubtedly, the most 
important event in his political life. In its ef- 
fects it was national as well as local and sectional. 
It formed the most conspicuous milestone on the 
road which led to the Civil War thirty years after- 
ward ; but its most noteworthy feature is that it was 
the first formal contest between the Unionists and 
the disunionists — a contest which Calhoun won for 
the disunionists in South Carolina, but which was 
wagedjuiceasingly from that time on in all the other 
parts of t he "South. 

The disunion sentiment throughout the South was 
tremendously accelerated by the success which was 
gained in South Carolina. It is true she had not 
nullified, as she had planned to do ; but with the 



CUBBING ANDEEW JACKSON 199 

ordinance of nullification leveled at it, Congress had 
altered the tariff with a view to satisfying her. The 
precedent was established, and similar threats in the 
future would produce similar results. The threats 
need not take the form of nullification — that precise 
plan was definitely abandoned after the one trial — 
but of some simpler form of resistance which every- 
body could understand. 

Calhoun, having been the leader of the nullifiers, 
was soon to become the leader of the state sover- 
eignty and slavery forces of the South, but at first 
he seemed to be entirely isolated. " I stand wholly 
disconnected with the two great political parties 
now contending for ascendency. My political cou- 
nections are with that small and denounced party 
which has voluntarily wholly retired from the party 
strifes of the day, with a view of saving, if possible, 
the liberty and the constitution of the country, in 
this great crisis of our affairs." 

These were the words in which Calhoun, on Jan- 
uary 13, 1834, announced in the Senate his position 
after the storm of nullification had passed. His 
prospects, however, were full of promise, for he did 
hot stand as a nullifier alone but as a champion of 
state sovereignty. Outside of South Carolina, few 
of the state rights party had been nullifiers ; but 
nullification was now reabsorbed by the broader 
doctrine from which it had been extracted. The 
Calhoun party was small, but it was an influential 
group in the Senate, for neither of the other parties 
had a clear majority, and it often held the balance 



200 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

of power. The leader himself deservedly enjoyed 
great prestige. Who had done so much as he? He 
had compelled the Whigs to lower the tariff ; he had 
caused au abaudoumeut of the original plan of dis- 
tributing the surplus revenue among the several 
states. In fact he had put to sleep for the time be- 
ing the whole scheme of the protectionists, and the 
cause of state rights was stronger than it had ever 
been. 

But Calhoun believed that he and South Carolina 
had done more than that. In destroying the tariff 
act of 1832, they had effected an immediate diminu- 
tion of the public revenue, with the probability of a 
further diminution in the future. If the revenue 
had continued to flow into the public treasury in so 
large a volume, the power of the Executive would 
have increased greatly with the inevitable result of 
despotism or disunion, the chances being on the side 
of despotism. The country had really been saved 
by South Carolina's timely act. Although obviously 
there was no immediate prospect of his ascendency, 
Calhoun was convinced that his standing with vir- 
tuous and intelligent men was higher than it had ever 
been, now that his character and motives were bet- 
ter understood. As Jackson went on with his high- 
handed measures, Calhoun came to believe that 
thousands in the North were being driven to espouse 
the state rights cause, as the only safeguard against 
executive usurpations ; and, when the banks began 
to break and acute industrial distress set in, he 
thought Northerners were coming to envy South- 



CUBBING ANDBEW JACKSON 201 

erners their slaves as a class less dangerous than free 
laboring men. His mind dwelt upon a state of so- 
ciety founded upon caste, and quick interchange 
among the classes and the constant recruiting of 
each from the ranks of the other was a condition 
upon which he did not reckon. Without doubt 
some timid or short-sighted Northerners would have 
preferred to hold slaves ; but they were only a few 
individuals, who could not see beyond their imme- 
diate surroundings, or who were thinking only of 
their personal comfort. 

Upon other subjects as well as slavery, Calhoun's 
judgment was often clouded by his hopes, desires 
and prejudices. For example, soon after the session 
of Congress began in 1834, he saw this illusion : 
His cause was advancing and would soon be in the 
ascendency. It was the cause of good government, 
and its triumph was, therefore, necessary. Jackson 
was drunk with flattery and vanity, and the victim 
of a lawless and insatiable ambition. He was al- 
ready a broken man and Van Buren and his corrup- 
tion were going down in the common wreck. The 
question was not whether the administration would 
be overthrown — that was settled — but what would 
take its place. It could not be his own party ; that 
must wait a little longer. In fact, Calhoun was 
nearly as fallible in his judgment of the future as 
politicians commonly are. Being personally and 
vitally interested in the events in which they play 
a part, they are seldom able correctly to estimate 
the future consequences and effects of those events. 



202 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

Calhoun's first undertaking in the Senate at the 
session of 1834 was to assist in censuring Jackson 
for removing the government deposits from the 
Bank of the United (States to a number of state 
banks. Two questions were involved and these he 
was able to discuss better than auy other man in the 
Semite : Had the Executive the constitutional 
power to make the removal without legislative di- 
rection ? Was the removal an injury or a benefit 
to the finances of the United States? Calhoun's 
idea of the division of powers, of the government 
was fine-spun, but in this instance it was correct, 
and his argument against the right of the Executive 
to abandon the designated government depository 
without legislative sanction was unanswerable. He 
had, moreover, daring his service in the House 
twenty years before, made an exhaustive study of 
financial questions, and the United •St'ates Bank was 
now, in fact, operating under the charter of 1816 
which he had drawn up. The President could 
hardly have expected that the Senate would support 
him iu his withdrawal of the deposits ; but he was 
not prepared for the savage onslaught made upon 
him, and none of the attacking senators laid on the 
lash more mercilessly than Calhoun, nor did any 
direct his blows with greater skill. The United 
States Bank, he said, had been charged with med- 
dling in politics ; but what could be said of the ad- 
ministration itself, which had perverted the govern- 
ment into a vast political machine with a view to 
corrupting and controlling the country ? What 



CUBBING ANDREW JACKSON 203 

could be said of the system of driving hundreds of 
honest men from office to fill their places with de- 
voted partisans? The truth was that the Bank had 
become obnoxious to the Executive, not because it 
meddled in politics, but because it did not meddle 
on the side of the administration. The question 
was not whether there should be a United States 
Bank ; — Calhoun was now inclined to oppose it as 
dangerous to liberty — but whether the President 
had the power by his own arrangement to create a 
bank ; for the banks selected by him to receive the 
public moneys constituted nothing but a national 
bank, which would have a greater influence in ex- 
tending the corruption of government than the old 
bank had ever had. The cause of the difficulty he 
saw in the protective system which had taken money 
from the pockets of the people and piled it up be- 
yond the necessities of the government. lie favored 
a complete divorce of the government from the 
banks, and the Independent Treasury Bill which 
Gordon of Virginia introduced in the House, was 
drawn up under his eye. It failed of passage, but 
undoubtedly paved the way for the adoption of a 
sounder system at a later day. 

When Calhoun heard that Webster intended to 
introduce a bill to recharter the Bank of the United 
States, he sent word through a mutual friend, that 
he wished to confer with him on the subject. Since 
the nullification debate of the year before, they had 
hardly been on speaking terms ; but their common 
opposition to Jackson now brought them together, 



204 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

and ever afterward, although they were usually 
political antagonists, their personal relations were 
respectful and courteous. Calhoun's plan for re- 
chartering the Bank was entirely different from Web- 
ster' s, for the former wished to continue it for twelve 
years on conditions which would gradually diminish 
the volume of paper currency, until at the end of 
the period the government might dispense with the 
use of paper altogether. 

Webster would not agree to this, and when his 
bill to recharter the Bank for six years came up, 
Calhoun supported it, because, he said, he hoped it 
would in some degree improve the disordered con- 
ditions to which the currency had been brought. 
He did not like the measure. The charter was for 
too long a time if its purpose was only to provide 
for the Bank's winding up its affairs ; it was for too 
short a time, if it was intended to reestablish the 
Bank. The trouble lay with the unreasonable in- 
flation of the currency by the issue of notes of state 
banks with insufficient specie behind them. At 
the same time, he would not accept the proposition 
to tax these notes so as to suppress them, because it 
would be an unconstitutional exercise of power ; the 
taxing power, as he concluded, being limited to the 
raising of revenue, and not properly pervertible to 
penal purposes. He was in favor of a "bank to 
unbank the banks" and restore a safe and stable 
currency, and it should be a new bank engrafted 
upon the old one. He thought there must be hard 
money alone or a United States Bank. The country 



CURBING ANDREW JACKSON 205 

was not yet ready for hard money, but the govern- 
ment could raise the relative value of silver and 
gold to sixteen to one and thus make gold instead 
of silver the metallic currency. 

Haviug voted for the resolution censuring Jack- 
son, he met without trepidation, the angry protest 
which Jackson hurled at the Senate. No one, Cal- 
houn said in his speech of May 6, 1834, could rea- 
sonably object to the Senate's passing resolutions 
in disapproval of the withdrawal of the deposits. 
Such a matter properly belonged to it. The 
President, on the other hand, in questioning the 
Senate's action, was stepping far beyond his consti- 
tutional rights. It would puzzle him to show upon 
what authority he did so, whereas the Constitution 
conferred upon Congress the power to make all laws 
necessary to carry into effect its own and all other 
powers vested in the government or any department 
or officer. 

Upon this power he laid much stress, and made it 
the basis of many arguments afterward. It was, he 
thought, a power which had been overlooked, and 
which properly understood was of the greatest im- 
portance. The President had no constructive or 
implied powers whatsoever; they were lodged in 
Congress alone. Neither he nor any department 
could do anything which the Constitution or some 
law made in pursuance of the Constitution did not 
expressly order or permit them to do. The pro- 
vision was vital, for if there was uncertainty as to 
where the power of construction lay, there would be 



206 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

incessant conflict between the various departments 
of the government, and in such a conflict, the Ex- 
ecutive, having the public patronage at his back, 
would become the sole expounder of the Constitu- 
tion. 

Calhoun, accordingly, moved that the Senate re- 
solve : "That the President of the United States 
has no light to send a protest to the Senate against 
any of its proceedings," and that the Senate do not 
receive the protest. The first resolution was carried 
by a vote of twenty-five to seventeen ; the second 
was lost by a vote of seven to thirty-four. When in 
1836 the resolution to expunge the censuring resolu- 
tion from the journals of the Senate was being con- 
sidered, he treated the proposition with withering 
scorn. Jackson, he said, had ordered it to be passed, 
and senators were voting for it without the least ref- 
erence to its propriety or constitutionality. 

In the question of the Bank and the withdrawal 
of the deposits from it, Calhoun acted with the 
national Eepnblicaus ; but the gold bill which he 
supported was an administration measure. He 
showed now, as he did frequently on other occasions, 
that the plan of his political life was never to occupy 
ground so far advanced as to make failure 
inevitable. If he could not get the full measure of 
what he wanted, he was able to take half measure 
and approximate success. One part of his scheme, 
however, failed completely, for he could not induce 
Congress to repeal the Force Bill. 

By its own terms it expired at the termination of 



CURBING ANDREW JACKSON 207 

the Congress then sitting, but the principle for 
which it stood must remain and the precedent must 
abide, unless it should be repealed before that date. 
On April 9, 1834, Calhoun made a speech urging 
the repeal. Again he explained the division of 
powers and "that beautiful, complex, federative 
system of government," which he himself had dis- 
covered. He said he had not changed the views 
expounded at the last session of Congress. "So 
far otherwise," he added, " time and reflection have 
but served to confirm me in the impression which I 
then entertained" ; and he stood ready to vindicate 
it against all assailants. He repeated the state- 
ment he had made in his speech of the previous 
session, that when the oppressions of the tariff had 
become insupportable, he began a deep search 
among the provisions of the Constitution, and then 
found his remedy. If the oppression had not come, 
he might have died, as he had hitherto lived, in 
utter ignorance of the true meaning of the Constitu- 
tion. Notwithstanding the repeal of the act of 
1832, the slow reduction of the tariff under the 
compromise law, combined with large sales of the 
public lands, produced more revenue than the 
government required. What should be done with 
the money? It had been taken from the people 
unnecessarily, but could not be directly returned to 
them. Whatever plan of spending it might be 
adopted would be carried out by the Executive and 
would increase his power and patronage, and the 
Executive was already having a debauch of power 



208 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

and patronage. Jackson's method of using the 
right of appointment and of removal from office had 
come as a hideous surprise to thoughtful men. 
The framers of the Constitution had never dreamed 
that an Executive would ever thus prostitute his 
powers. 

The attention of all who discussed the spoils 
system at this time was concentrated upon the 
question of removals for political reasons. In mak- 
ing app ointments, it was generally conceded that 
the Executive had a right to name those who 
were in political sympathy with him ; but to 
remove men who were honest and competent, so as 
to make places for party friends, was regarded as 
indefensible. It is true that Jefferson had done 
this very thing ; but Madison, Monroe and Adams 
had not done it. In fact, as all belonged to the 
same party, they had not been under strong tempta- 
tion or pressure to do it. Thus it had happened 
that there had been respectable use of the execu- 
tive patronage for twenty years ; and that it had 
maintained from the beginning of the government, 
except for a few years during Jefferson's term. In 
the meantime, the patronage of the President had 
naturally grown, and had been artificially increased 
by the policy of extending the operations of govern- 
ment into new fields. 

As for Jackson's system, no man of note in Con- 
gress defended it, It remained for a later genera- 
tion to construct specious and false arguments to 
justify the distribution of the offices of government 



CURBING ANDREW JACKSON 209 

for corrupt party purposes. When Calhoun, there- 
fore, moved the appointment of a committee of six 
senators to enquire into the extent of executive 
patronage and the proper mode of reducing it, his 
motion was agreed to without noticeable oppo- 
sition. He proposed this number, so that each 
political party might have two representatives. 
The committee's action would then come with the 
force of agreement of all parties. Calhoun, as its 
chairman, wrote the report which was approved 
by all the members except Thomas H. Benton. 
The Senate itself was so well pleased that it 
ordered 10,000 copies printed for distribution with 
a view to influencing public opinion. This, how- 
ever, it did not do, for it was too long and too 
statistical to be read widely, and the doctrine it 
preached was not likely to find admirers among 
men of the ordinary run. 

As the patronage had been increased by the in- 
creased revenue, and as the revenue would be larger 
than the expenditures until the second reduction of 
the tariff took place in 1843, Calhoun was com- 
pelled to propose as the best possible plan for dis- 
posing of the surplus, a scheme of his own for dis- 
tributing it among the several states. It is true 
that the probability of such a distribution on a dif- 
ferent basis had been one of his chief reasons for 
opposing the tariff. Once let the states taste this 
enticing draught, which they would obtain without 
laying a penny of direct taxes upon their people, 
and there would be produced an unquenchable thirst 



210 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

for more and an ineradicable fondness for a tariff 
which would give more. Calhoun now thought to 
avoid this result by providing for a distribution 
which would be only temporary, and, as he had in- 
sisted on many occasions that any distribution 
would be in violation of the Constitution, he pro- 
posed that the instrument be amended so as to pro- 
vide for the payments for eight years. But at the 
end of this period, what was to prevent another 
amendment? All the arguments that he had ever 
made against the scheme of distribution now 
applied with equal force to his own scheme. From 
his point of view, there was this to be said in its 
favor : It would relieve the Federal government of 
the temptation of spending the surplus, and the 
executive patronage would not be increased by it. 
On the contrary, the states would have a motive to 
watch the general government and make its expendi- 
ture small, so that they might have as much as possi- 
ble for themselves. His proposal for a constitutional 
amendment failed, but his plan of depositing the 
surplus revenue in the treasuries of the states was 
agreed to by an overwhelming vote at the session 
of 1836. 

When tbe bill to repeal the four years' tenure of 
certain offices and to forbid removals by the Presi- 
dent, except upon reasons communicated to Congress, 
was under discussion, Calhoun advanced the theory 
that the Constitution did not give the Executive the 
right to make removals. It was not expressly 
granted to him, and it was not a power necessary to 



CUBBING ANDBEW JACKSON 211 

execute some power expressly granted to him ; 
therefore, it did not exist, but remained to be con- 
trolled and regulated by Congress. If it were other- 
wise, and the President had complete power of re- 
moval as well as appointment, all office-holders 
would be his supple and willing tools and he would 
wield despotic authority. 

That the President had not the power to remove 
from office was not a discovery of Calhoun, for the 
idea had been contended for in the First Congress. 
The question was supposed to have been settled per- 
manently when that Congress definitely decided that 
the right of removal was a necessary adjunct of the 
executive power to appoint. The point had arisen 
over the bill to create a Department of Foreign 
Affairs and make the head of that department re- 
movable by the President. Elias Boudinot, of New 
Jersey, had put the case thus : Suppose the Presi- 
dent wishes to dismiss an officer, and asks the advice 
and consent of the Senate regarding his course. To 
learn the facts, the Senate must summon the officer 
before it. And suppose the Senate decides that the 
President's reasons are not sufficient. In what a 
position he would then be, with a subordinate over 
whom he could have no authority. In that case the 
executive head of the government would really be 
the Senate, not the President, Congress had de- 
cided that, as the right of removal was a constitu- 
tional right of the President, it should not be ex- 
pressly granted in the law ; therefore, it had so 
framed the act creating the Department of Foreign 



212 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

Affairs that it merely recognized the right. The 
clause providing for a chief clerk said that he 
should have charge, whenever the principal officer 
shall be removed from office by the President, or be dis- 
abled from acting. Like everybody else, Calhoun 
had accepted this decision as final, until Jackson 
made so many removals that he began to examine the 
question ab ovo. By the same road that had led him 
to find the doctrine of nullification, he now learned 
that the constitutional power of removal from office 
was not with the President, This discovery aroused 
his enthusiasm, and was another proof of the per- 
fection of the Constitution, if it were only properly 
understood. Webster, Clay and most of the sena- 
tors who stood opposed to Jackson, agreed with him. 
Their views were undoubtedly colored by their de- 
sire to curb the President's unbridled use of power, 
for under ordinary circumstances they would not have 
accepted a construction of the Constitution which de- 
prived him of authority over his own subordinates. 
Leaving out the constitutional argument, however, 
Calhoun's arraignment of the spoils system was 
masterly. He dismissed with contempt the plea 
that there should be rotation in purely administra- 
tive posts. Among officers chosen by the votes of 
the people, rotation might be accepted, he said, but 
appointive officers should be rendered secure in 
their places so long as they discharged their duties 
properly, and he would no more permit their dis 
placement on party grounds than he would allow 
them to be divested of their freeholds. 



CUBBING ANDBEW JACKSON 213 

It was during this debate that he and Benton first 
contended. Calhoun was never a gladiator, who en- 
gaged in death struggles with an antagonist, in 
order that the spectators might have the excitement 
of witnessing the tight. When he attacked a man, 
it was only because that man stood for measures 
which he believed to be bad, his real object of attack 
always being the measures. In the debate on the 
spoils system, Benton had congratulated him on 
having kept the discussion on a high plane ; but, of 
course, to assail the spoils system was to assail Jack- 
son, Van Buren and all their hosts. In point of 
fact, what was said must have been particularly 
irritating, for Calhoun was disposed to absolve the 
President from the chief blame, and lay it upon the 
despicable coterie of corruptionists who surrounded 
and influenced him. 

Whatever the feeling on the subject may have 
been throughout the country, in Washington public 
opinion was bitterly arrayed against Jackson's sys- 
tem ; for the social life of the capital had been 
broken to pieces by the dismissal from office of men 
who had been almost lifelong residents, and whose 
distresses, when suddenly deprived of their only 
means of support, aroused intense sympathy. Con- 
sequently the society of the city never became recon- 
ciled to Jackson, and at this time was willing to be- 
lieve the rumor which was circulated that he had 
lost his mind, and was no more than a tool in the 
hands of the men who constituted his " Kitchen 
Cabinet." When Calhoun made his speech of Feb- 



214 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

ruary 13, 1835, arraigning the spoils system, the 
Senate chamber, as well as the gallery, was crowded 
with a sympathetic audience of Washington women, 
who became very much excited when Benton rep] ied 
with a violent attack on Calhoun. That same even- 
ing a rumor was circulated that a duel would take 
place ; but there was really no ground for a challenge 
on either side. Benton was obliged to admit a gen- 
eral concurrence in Calhoun's presentation of the 
evils resulting from a growing patronage ; but he 
traced the beginning of the increased expenditures 
of government to the policy of internal improve- 
ments — a system which Calhoun himself had intro- 
duced while in Monroe's cabinet by his report on 
the subject. This report, Benton said, had been 
written by Calhoun to enhance his popularity and 
advance his candidacy for the presidency. Another 
cause of increasing expenditure was the Revolution- 
ary pensions. These had been granted by Congress 
on the recommendation of the administration of 
which Calhoun had been a part, Both of these 
charges were far-fetched, but Benton was nearer the 
mark when he cited Jefferson's example as a prec- 
edent for removals from office, and there was force 
in his ridicule of the proposition to distribute the 
surplus by constitutional amendment. Peradven- 
ture there might be no surplus to distribute, and he 
brought out Calhoun's inconsistency in advocating 
now what he had so recently opposed. It was, he 
said, a strange proposition, to amend for eight years 
a Constitution designed to last forever. Calhoun's 



CUBBING ANDEEW JACKSON 215 

reply on these points was defensive ; bnt on the gen- 
eral subject at issue he was easily triumphant with- 
out stooping to any of the personalities which Ben- 
ton had used so freely. The two speeches are good 
examples of opposite styles — Benton verbose and 
pretentious, making sophomoric displays of cheap 
learning, but a speaker of no mean power and of 
absolute courage ; Calhoun dignified, restrained, 
with no effort at display, using no ornamentation, 
saying his say pointedly, and with the single pur- 
pose of bringing conviction to the minds of those 
who heard him. 



CHAPTER XV 

LIKES AND DISLIKES 

Because of his attack upon him, especially be- 
cause he had accused him of having favored internal 
improvements in the earlier part of his career so as 
to curry favor and improve his chances for the pres- 
idency, Calhoun entertained a personal dislike for 
Benton, which he did not attempt to conceal. Ben- 
ton's political views were, of course, antagonistic to 
Calhoun's, and when such was the case he judged 
men harshly. The people of South Carolina placed 
him upon a j)edestal in the year 1832 and bowed 
down before him, and have continued to do so with 
increasing reverence ever since. They have seen in 
him none but the noblest attributes, and noble at- 
tributes he unquestionably had. His motives were 
noble, his character was noble, and he was of noble 
intellectual attainments ; but he had, nevertheless, 
a characteristic which is not noble, for he attributed 
impure motives to men who differed with him and 
opposed him, and he judged their motives harshly 
because they differed with him and opposed him. 
His experience of men in public life came to control 
his private opinion of them more and more, as he 
grew more and more absorbed in political questions ; 
so that he was willing to believe ill of Benton, and 



LIKES AND DISLIKES 217 

on one occasion (August 4, 1819) said: u He has 
bribed the papers at the seat of government by jobs 
at the public expense." He had a still lower opin- 
ion of Van Buren, who he thought had introduced 
into politics a degraded and corrupting system. 
Van Buren had tried to do him injury, and Calhoun 
came very near to hating him, and for many years did 
not speak to him. But so completely were his per- 
sonal feelings subordinated to political exigencies that 
when Van Buren became President and was pursu- 
ing a course favorable to his old foe, the latter called 
upon him and opened a friendly intercourse, as we 
shall presently see. 

Of course, Calhoun's deepest dislike was for Jack- 
son. In 1821 he had taken Jackson's side against 
Adams and Clay. Four years later he had helped 
to make Jackson President ; but the latter's attack 
upon him for his course in the Seminole affair he 
was never able to forgive. The purpose of the at- 
tack was what stung him, for it was intended by 
those who were at the bottom of it to blast his chances 
for the presidency ; so that his feelings toward 
Jackson bordered on antipathy, and he was accused 
of being actuated by his known enmity in nearly 
every action taken in the Senate while Jackson 
held office. When he was debating the proposition 
to prohibit postmasters from receiving Abolition 
literature, Calhoun said : "I have too little regard 
for the opinion of General Jackson, and, were it not 
for his high station, I would add, his character too, 
to permit his course to influence me in the slightest 



218 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

degree, either for or against airy measure." The 
depth of the quarrel between the two is hard to 
fathom. It caused discussion far and wide when it 
occurred, and Calhoun's followers seldom mentioned 
Jackson's name in his presence. Before he became 
President, Jackson was known as a state rights man, 
and Calhoun undoubtedly entertained a hope that 
they would be political friends. He was vexed 
when he found that antagonistic influences com- 
pletely surrounded the President. 

The two men had a passage at arms within a 
mouth of Jackson's retirement from office, the diffi- 
culty arising over Calhoun's opposition to the ad- 
ministration's bill for the disposition of the public 
lands. These lands were sold for $1. 25 an acre, and 
reckless speculation in them was one of the causes 
of the disastrous commercial crash which came soon 
after Van Buren was inaugurated. As the currency 
was inflated and money became cheap and plentiful, 
the prices of everything except public lands rose. 
These remained stationary by law, and there was, in 
consequence, a wild rush to buy them for resale. 
The activity had originally deluded Jackson into 
the belief that it evidenced public prosperity ; but 
in 1836 he saw his mistake, and with his sanction 
a bill was introduced in Congress to limit the sales 
to actual settlers, and require their registration be- 
fore land officers. Calhoun's chief criticism of the 
measure was that it gave these officers, who were all 
political agents of the party in power, opportunity 
to molest settlers and eveu disrjossess them, He set 



LIKES AND DISLIKES 219 

forth his objections on February 4th, saying that he 
deprecated the deplorable extent to which specula- 
tion had gone, but that the bill would increase it, 
because settlers would buy of speculators and obtain 
their lands outright rather than go through the 
period of residence, with the other formalities neces- 
sary to obtain government land. Those in power 
had originated the speculation and profited by it in 
a political and a pecuniary way. In the official re- 
port of the speech in the Globe, he was made to say 
further: "Was it not notorious that the President 
of the United States had himself been connected 
with the purchase of public lands?" But there- 
port in the National Intelligencer had it: " Is not 
one in the immediate neighborhood of the Executive 
among those the most deeply concerned?" The 
allusion was to the land speculations of a Mr. Mc- 
Lemore, a nephew of the President, but some people 
who heard the speech naturally misunderstood it as 
referring to the President himself. Jackson's feel- 
ings when he read it can be imagined. He wrote to 
Calhoun on February 7th, saying that if the state- 
ment was true, he ought to be impeached ; if it was 
not true, "the punishment which belongs to me, if 
guilty, is too mild for him who wilfully makes it." 
He went on : "The whole charge, unless explained, 
must be considered the offspring of a morbid imagi- 
nation, or of sleepless malice. I ask you, sir, as an 
act due to justice, honor, and truth, to retract this 
charge on the floor of the Senate, in as public a 
manner as it has been uttered." If he would not do 



220 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

that, then the President demanded that Calhoun 
place his case before the House of Representa- 
tives for examination. If he would do neither, then 
Jackson would publish the letter, " by which you 
will stand stigmatized as one who, protected by his 
constitutional privilege, is ready to stab the reputa- 
tion of others, without the magnanimity to do them 
justice, or the honor to place them in a situation to 
receive it from others. ' ' 

The letter had the characteristics of the beginning 
of a correspondence usually ending in a duel, and on 
February 9th Calhoun had it read in the Senate, 
his object being, as he said, to reiterate the charges 
that he had made. He explained more at length 
than in the first speech the connection of the admin- 
istration with the speculation. His allusion to the 
President's proximity to it he made clear by specif- 
ically naming McLemore. He did not propose to 
comply with any of Jackson's demands, he said, 
and wished that all might see "what little cause the 
President had for the outrage upon his privilege, 
and that of the Senate, and for applying language to 
him which is never used in intercourse between gen- 
tlemen, and better suited to the purlieus of Billings- 
gate than to the mansion of the Chief Magistrate." 

Nevertheless, Calhoun's feelings toward Jackson 
appear to have softened after the latter retired to 
private life, and he is credibly reported once to have 
said of the general, " He is a great man." 1 

1 Rev. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney in LippincotVa Magazine, 
July, 1898. 



LIKES AND DISLIKES 221 

Calhoun was a man of model private life, of tem- 
perate habits, and careful iu all his financial trans- 
action ; but he lived at a time when many public 
men were loose livers, intemperate and profligate. 
These attributes belonged to some of his political 
friends and to some of his opponents ; but he never 
refused political association with men of bad private 
morals, nor used a knowledge of an enemy's short- 
comings in this respect as a weapon against him. 
A man's public life and his views on public ques- 
tions were the only things that concerned him. In 
1842 Lord Morpeth came to Washington bearing 
letters to Calhoun, but Calhoun confessed that he 
did not care to see much of him, because he had at- 
tended an Abolition meeting in Boston. 

It would have been strange if Calhoun had liked 
Henry Clay, who represented what he hated most — • 
a Southern man who believed in Federal supremacy, 
who disliked slavery and who patronized the colo- 
nization society. Calhoun regarded him as "a great 
disturbing power in the harmonious and regular 
movements of our government, especially in the 
Southern and Western portion, where the influence 
of his personal character has been the most felt. He 
has done much to distract the South and to keep the 
West out of its true position." When the two were 
pitted against each other in debate, as they often 
were, they usually observed all the amenities, but 
Calhoun did not always look upon Clay's attacks as 
justifiable. He wrote confidentially on one occasion 
to his daughter, Mrs. Clemson : " Mr. Clay is very 



222 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

impudent and I expect to have a round with him." 
They did have a furious contest in the session of 
1838, when the Sub-Treasury Bill, an adminis- 
tration measure, was before the Senate. Since 
Calhoun advocated it, Clay accused him of having 
gone over to the administration party. His reply 
is probably the most impassioned of all his speeches, 
and is one of the most interesting because of the dis- 
closure of his own nature which he made. 

A spectator described him as standing with every 
feature and muscle tense with emotion, his hair on 
end, and large drops of sweat on his forehead, while 
the Senate sat breathless with excitement and not a 
sound was heard, except his shrill voice pouring out 
a denunciation of Clay and a defense of himself. 
The charge that he had gone over to any party en- 
raged him. He was not, he said, one who paid no 
regard to party obligations. They were among the 
political virtues, but must be confined to a limited 
sphere, to matters of detail and minor questions of 
policy. Questions of principle, which materially 
affected the interests of the country, were above 
them. As for him, he belonged to the old Republi- 
can state rights party of 1798 and changed not. 
Clay had charged that his intellectual faculties were 
metaphysical, with too much of genius and too little 
of common sense, and to this he replied, admitting 
that he had a metaphysical mind, if it was under- 
stood as comprising "those higher faculties (called 
metaphysical by those who do not possess them), 
which decompose and resolve into their elements 



LIKES AND DISLIKES 223 

the complex masses of ideas that exist in the world 
of mind, as chemistry does the bodies that surround 
us in the material world ; and without which those 
deep and hidden causes, which are in constant ac- 
tion and producing- such mighty changes in the con- 
dition of society, would operate unseen and unde- 
tected." He charged Clay with favoring popular 
measures without any idea of their consequences, 
and repeated the old charge of the corrupt bargain 
with Adams. 

Daniel Webster, being a New England Federalist, 
was a natural enemy of Calhoun. He believed the 
success of Webster's theory of government would be 
destructive to American liberty ; and because of 
their wide separation he regarded him with aloof- 
ness. In the same debate in which he had his en- 
counter with Clay, Calhoun was attacked by Web- 
ster and replied that he and Webster represented 
irreconcilable opinions on the nature of the govern- 
ment, and that each was in his proper sphere when 
in open hostility to the other. He did not believe 
in Webster's earnestness. Being asked in 1832 
what were his prospects of being nominated for the 
presidency, Calhoun answered: "Mr. Webster 
will never be President. He lacks the qualifications 
of a leader ; he has no faith in his own convictions ; 
he can never be the head of a party. Though very 
superior in intellect to Mr. Clay, he lacks his moral 
courage and his strong convictions. Hence Mr. 
Clay will always be the head of the party, and 
Mr. Webster will naturally follow his lead. If 



224 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

either of them reaches the presidency, it will be 
Clay, not Webster." 1 

These three men, Calhoun, Clay and Webster, 
occupied the centre of the stage and engrossed pub- 
lic attention. They were all aspirants to the 
presidency, but it should be insisted upon that 
Calhoun showed better qualifications than either of 
the others. He was of steadier industry than 
Webster, less swayed by his personal followers than 
Clay, and of greater executive experience than 
either of them. He had no personal weaknesses 
to embarrass him in public office as they had, and 
his orderliness of mind, his integrity of purpose, 
his independence of action, his knowledge of the 
workings of the government, his quiet masterful- 
ness of nature combined to qualify him in an ex- 
traordinary degree to perform the duties of a Presi- 
dent. So far as foreign affairs were concerned, he 
regarded this country as a nation, and he was better 
able to manage this important branch of the public 
business than any other man in the United States ; 
while he was certainly second to none in his 
knowledge of financial questions. Calhoun inspired 
in his followers no such romantic devotion as many 
men felt for Henry Clay ; he excited none of the 
awful admiration which caused Webster's ad- 
herents to consider him one of the wonders 
of the age ; but he stood with many people in the 
South and with nearly all people in South 

1 Rev. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney iu Lippincolt's Magazine, 
July, 1898. 



LIKES AND DISLIKES 225 

Carolina upon a higher plane than Clay or Webster 
ever occupied with any people. 

As he passed through the country districts in 
South Carolina, fathers would come out to meet him 
and present their children to him for notice ; and 
if he gave one a trinket it was cherished as an heir- 
loom, while ladies in Charleston kept his visiting- 
cards as precious mementoes. His unselfishness, 
his freedom from personal weakness, his simplicity 
of character, and, above all, his complete identifica- 
tion with the aspirations of his people, made them 
look up to him as no other public man in our 
history has ever been looked up to since the days of 
George Washington. All this adulation he took 
with perfect modesty, and its only effect upon him 
was to produce a becoming addition of dignity. It 
awakened no personal vanity, nor affectation, nor 
any desire to enlarge his social horizon. The com- 
munity in which he lived was a small one, but to 
him it was the best in the world. As soon as the 
Senate rose, he always returned at once to "Fort 
Hill." 

This charming estate, with which he became identi- 
fied as Washington had been with " Mount Vernon " 
aud as Jackson was with "The Hermitage," derived 
its name from an old fort which had been built there 
during the Eevolution by General Andrew Pickens. 
The Seneca Eiver ran through it, and the large 
comfortable frame house, with a portico of tall 
white pillars, stood upon an eminence with corn 
and cotton-fields sloping down to the river-bank. 



226 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

Beyond were wooded hills stretching to the Blue 
Eidge Mountains. Amid these scenes Calhoun 
loved to dwell, and he seldom left "Fort Hill" un- 
til he was obliged to return to Washington. 

There was a peculiarly attractive simplicity 
about the life of men of his order. Their interests 
were wholesome, being divided between the 
plantation and public affairs, with little else to 
complicate their attention. The social life was a 
family life, and fostered family affection and 
cohesion. The Calhouns became so large a con- 
nection that it was almost possible for him to travel 
from one end of the state to the other, and stop only 
at the houses of his relations. It is easy to see how 
country families, staying in one place, new gen- 
erations marrying into other country families, con- 
stantly increasing in numbers, could by acting to- 
gether exert a great influence upon political affairs ; 
and while the nation was young and country life was 
the only life, in the older states the families played a 
part in politics which has since wholly disappeared. 

Calhoun participated in the society about him 
with perfect satisfaction, discussing suspected en- 
gagements, attending the weddings and consequent 
christenings, and enjoying also the dinner-parties 
which the country gentlemen gave to one another. 
All the small happenings of his world were of interest 
to him. No better life than that of a Southern 
planter was desired by him or by other Southern 
planters. It represented to them the very acme of 
human wishes ; nor were they blameworthy in find- 



LIKES AND DISLIKES 227 

ing full satisfaction in a life which had so much of 
simplicity, comfort, responsibility, and wholesome 
exercise of manly qualities. Whatever else may be 
said of them they lived, at least, the lives of gentle- 
men. 

Among his brother planters, Calhoun found 
nearly all of his personal friends. He entertained 
a warm regard especially for James H. Hammond, 
an able man, who sat at his feet and hung upon 
his words, and who afterward played so prominent 
a part as a leader of the slavery and secession 
parties ; for General Francis W. Pickens, his 
second cousin, a member of Congress from 1834 to 
1843, and after Calhoun's death minister to Eussia 
and governor of his state ; for James Edward 
Calhoun, his brother-in-law, for a time a naval 
officer and then a planter ; for his son-in-law, 
Thomas G. Clemson, who married his eldest daugh- 
ter Anna, and whom he sent as minister to Bel- 
gium ; for Henry Gourdain, George H. Trenholm 
and George H. Iugraham in Charleston ; for Armi- 
stead Burt, who married his niece and represented 
the state in Congress from 1845 to 1853. His prin- 
cipal friends outside of South Carolina were Major 
Christopher Van Derventer, who was his chief clerk 
when he was Secretary of War ; Bichard K. Crall£, 
of Virginia, who was his chief clerk in 1844, when 
he was Secretary of State, and who edited his 
Works after his death ; Virgil Maxcy, of Maryland, 
and Duff Green, whose daughter Calhoun's eldest 
son Andrew married, and whose paper, the United 



228 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

States Telegraph, supported Calhoun's candidacy for 
the presidency in 1836. For Samuel D. Ingham, of 
Pennsylvania, who first brought his name forward 
for the office, he entertained an enduring friendship 
and sense of gratitude. He had a devoted friend, 
too, in Dixon H. Lewis, a mighty representative 
and senator from the state of Alabama, weighing 
450 pounds, who thought him the greatest man 
in the world and toiled lustily to make him Presi- 
dent ; but Lewis craved recreation and complained 
that Calhoun's society afforded none. He wrote to 
Cralle on March 20, 1840: "Calhoun is now my 
principal associate, and he is too intellectual, too 
industrious, too intent in the struggle of politics to 
suit me except as an occasional companion. There 
is no relaxation with him. On the contrary, when 
I seek relaxation in him, he screws me only the 
hitrher in some sort of excitement." ' Lewis was not 
the only one who complained of over-stimulation 
from Calhoun's society. Judge Prioleau after he 
had met him for the first time at Pendleton at a 
dinner-party, was asked how he liked him. "Not 
at all," he replied; "I desire never to meet him 
again. I hate a man who makes me think so much. 
For the last three hours I have been on the stretch, 
trying to follow him through heaven and earth. I 
feel wearied with the effort ; and I hate a man who 
makes me feel my own inferiority." 2 

1 Crall<5 MSS. 

5 Rev. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney in LippineoW 's Magazine, 
July, 1898. 



LIKES AND DISLIKES 229 

It is small wonder that his neighbors should have 
called him, as they did, "the thinking machine." 

Calhoun's friends were also his followers, but he 
endeavored, as we have seen, not to break off 
entirely his earlier association with those in Caro- 
lina who would not accept his leadership on the nul- 
lification question. After the excitement of that 
movement had died out, some of them were recon- 
ciled to him— notably Daniel E. Huger, who took 
Calhoun's place in the Senate when he left public 
life for a year in 1843, and who promptly resigned 
the seat as soon as the leader was willing to return 
to it ; and Poinsett, with whom he fell into friendly 
accord almost as soon as normal conditions had been 
resumed. 

That Calhoun should have avoided association 
with Lord Morpeth because he had avowed sym- 
pathy with the cause of Abolition, was only to be 
expected. In 1835, there began an active anti- 
slavery propaganda, and Abolition literature was 
circulated extensively in the South. When Con- 
gress met, the President in his message recom- 
mended that a law be passed denying the use of the 
mails to such incendiary matter. At the same time 
Congress was besieged by petitions to abolish slav- 
ery in the District of Columbia, this being a part 
of the plan of action of the Abolitionists. The 
safety of the slaveholding communities required, 
above all things, that the negroes should not know 
there was any movement on foot to set them free ; 
for if they got such an impression, they would nat- 



230 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

urally try to set themselves free, aud iu trying would 
murder their masters. Iu any case, harm was sure 
to come to the slaveholders. If they sat silent, the 
Abolitionist cry for freedom would be heard ; on 
the other hand, if measures to suppress the propa- 
ganda were proposed, they must be publicly dis- 
cussed and the discussion was as damaging as the 
appeal. This accounts for the heat and rage with 
which the slaveholders took up the subject, and they 
did so only because they believed it would be worse 
to let it alone. At any rate, they would force the 
government to set itself a'gainst the agitation and do 
all it could to suppress it, and here they were clearly 
within their legal rights, for the laws guaranteed 
them in the possession of their slave property. It 
was Calhoun's belief that the cause of Abolition 
activity could be directly traced to Jackson's nulli- 
fication proclamation, declaring the Federal gov- 
ernment supreme. If this declaration was correct, 
then all the states had a responsibility for slavery, 
and power to get rid of it. 

It is hard to find a good argument against the 
power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District 
of Columbia, and this was all the petitioners now 
asked for. Over the area ten miles square, Con- 
gress was in complete authority, and the citizens 
enjoyed snch rights as it chose to give them. If a 
state government could abolish slavery in a state, 
and no one disputed that it could, Congress certainly 
could abolish it in Washington. But this was not 
the point ; for hardly any one in Congress would 



LIKES AND DISLIKES 231 

have voted for Abolition iu the District of Columbia, 
because to do so would be to encourage the efforts 
to secure it elsewhere. The question debated was 
whether the petitions of Abolitionists should be re- 
ceived by Congress and their prayer immediately 
refused ; or whether they should not be received at 
all. The speech which Calhoun delivered on March 
9, 1836, against the reception of the petitions was 
one of his strongest, and it put him in line to as- 
sume at an early day, the leadership of the slavery 
and state sovereignty cause. In making it, he was 
in j)erfect accord with public sentiment in the state 
he represented, and could in proof have pointed 
specifically to the resolutions passed by the legisla- 
ture on several occasions. His first object was to 
prove that the Senate was not obliged to receive the 
petitions, and that in refusing to do so, it only asserted 
its rights ; for if it were under such obi igation it might 
be inundated with pleas urging all sorts of improper 
and unlawful requests. He proved his point by well- 
selected precedents of refusals on the part of the Sen- 
ate and other legislative bodies to receive such papers. 
He thought the refusal was vital to his cause. If the 
petitions must be received, the South must wage an 
eternal warfare against what they prayed for. There 
would be no rest ; the agitation would continue day 
after day, doing incalculable harm ; and in the end 
the South would be forced, for its own safety, to 
abandon a Union for which it was obliged to pay 
so heavy a price. He regarded the question as an 
outpost of slavery that must be defended at all 



232 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

hazards. If the Abolitionists seized it, they would 
obtain a foothold from which they could never be 
dislodged. 

The Senate was not disposed to go so far. It 
rejected Calhoun's motion by a vote of thirty-six to 
ten. A plan of James Buchanan was agreed to by 
which the petitions were received and immediately 
rejected without debate. Although Calhoun would 
not vote on Buchanan's scheme, the effect he desired 
to secure was accomplished, for the petitioners were 
as much disheartened by the silent rejection of their 
petitions as they would have been by their non-re- 
ception. 

On December 19th, Senator Swift of Vermont 
introduced a memorial and resolutions, which had 
been adopted by the legislature of that state, pray- 
ing that slavery be abolished in the District of Co- 
lumbia and that Texas be not annexed. Calhoun 
had no premonition that the memorial would be 
presented or even that it had ever been adopted in 
Vermont, but instantly he formed a momentous and 
unshakeable resolut ion. He would meet the question 
of interference with slavery here and now, and he 
would compel the Senate solemnly to add the weight 
of its authority on the side of slavery and the slave 
states. Accordingly, no sooner had the Vermont 
memorial been read than he announced that the 
question it presented must be met and that he 
would not permit it to rest until it had been finally 
acted upon. "His mind," he said, " was unalter- 
ably fixed, and nothing would prevent him from 



LIKES AND DISLIKES 233 

putti Dg his views into execution. ' ' The paper could 
uot be classed with ordinary Abolition petitions, 
which came from irresponsible societies, many of 
them composed largely of women. It had been 
passed by the legislature of a state and Calhoun in- 
sisted that it must, therefore, be noticed. 

Although his determination to bring the question 
to an issue was suddenly formed, it was not a mere 
impulse, nor did it spring from a new thought. 
That Abolitionism must be met by the assertion of 
state sovereignty was Carolina doctrine ; neverthe- 
less, many in Carolina and in the South thought 
that Calhoun was committing an error in forcing 
the issue, and Preston, his colleague in the Sen- 
ate, led the opposition. They thought that the 
Vermont memorial should have been treated like 
any other anti -slavery document, and silently 
voted down ; but nothing could deter Calhoun from 
proceeding with his plan, and when it came to the 
point, the Southerners were obliged to vote for the 
resolutions which he forced upon the Senate. 

These resolutions were six in all and were pre- 
sented on December 27th. They recited : 

(1) That the states had severally adopted the 
Constitution to insure security against all dangers 
"domestic, as well as foreign." 

(2) That they retained control over their domes- 
tic institutions and any intermeddling under any 
pretext, "political, moral or religious" was an as- 
sumption of superiority not warranted by the Con- 
stitution, " insulting to the states interfered with, — 



234 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

tending to endanger their domestic peace and tran- 
quillity," subversive of the Constitution and tending 
to destroy the Union. 

(3) That the Union was t he common agent of the 
states, and as such was bound to iucrease the secur- 
ity of their domestic institutions, and not permit it- 
self to become the instrument to destroy or weaken 
them. 

(4) That no change of feeling on the part of 
other states in relation to slavery could j ustify at- 
tacks upon it, and that such attacks were in mani- 
fest violation of the solemn pledge of all the states to 
protect each other. 

(5) That abolition of slavery in the District of 
Columbia and the territories where it then existed 
would be a dangerous attack upon slavery else- 
where. 

(6) That the Union rested upon an equality of 
rights and advantages among the states, and that to 
destroy this equality would tend to destroy the 
Union ; wherefore it was the duty of Congress to re- 
sist attempts to discriminate between the states in 
extending the benefits of the government or to pre- 
vent them from increasing " their limits or popula- 
tion, by the annexation of new territories, or states " 
on the assumption that it would be sinful to extend 
slavery. 

The last resolution, as it related to the annexation 
of Texas, a subject which was to be taken up in due 
season by itself, was, on Preston's motion, rejected. 
On January 12th, the first four resolutions, as Cal- 
houn had presented them, were finally adopted by 
large majorities. The fifth resolution was modified 



LIKES AND DISLIKES 235 

with his consent, so as to say that Abolition in the 
territories would cause serious alarm in the slave 
states. 

It is not. necessary to show the folly of these reso- 
lutions. If the "intermeddling " was prompted by 
moral and "religious" convictions, it was beyond 
the power of Congress ; but Calhoun resisted an 
effort to strike out the word "religious," saying 
that " the whole spirit of the resolution hinged upon 
that word." He defended his course in a series of 
speeches beginning December 28th, the day after he 
had introduced the resolutions, and running to Jan- 
uary 12th. He said they were necessary. " What 
remains, then, short of taking our protection into 
our own hands, but to find some barrier in the gen- 
eral character and structure of our political system ? 
And where can we find that but in the view of the 
Constitution, which considers it as a compact be- 
tween sovereign and independent states, formed for 
their mutual prosperity and security % " It was not 
in the slaveholding section, he said, that he feared 
the effect of Abolition literature. It could not cir- 
culate there ; the effect in the North was what he 
dreaded. There it was infusing a deadly poison in 
the minds of the people and breeding hate between 
the sections — making two people of one. The 
Abolitionists were destroying the Union by holding 
up to execration the character and institutions of 
the people of nearly one half of that Union. The 
responsibility was on them, for they were the as- 
sailants. He was not sanguine of the effect of the 



236 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

resolutions, but he had clone his duty in presenting 
them. It was inevitable that unless the spirit 
abroad in the non-slaveholding states was arrested, 
there would be secession or civil commotion. The 
two races had beeu brought together in the South. 
They were united beyond the possibility of separa- 
tion and the relation had benefited both whites and 
blacks. Its destruction meant ' ' to involve a whole 
region in slaughter, carnage, and desolation." As 
for him, it had pleased Providence to cast his lot in 
the slaveholding states. There were his hopes, and 
all that was near and dear to him. His first duty 
was to them, and he held every other, even his obli- 
gations to this government and this Union, sacred 
as he regarded them, subordinate to their safety. 

Calhoun opposed Jackson's proposition for deny- 
ing the use of the mails to incendiary Abolition 
publications, because it was a recognition of the 
right of the general government to deal with the 
subject. If incendiary publications, he said in a 
speech on April 12th, could be kept out, then the 
government would have a right to insist that publi- 
cations which were not incendiary should go in, and 
would have to determine which were incendiary and 
which were not. The whole question belonged to 
the states exclusively, but as the general govern- 
ment carried the mails, he proposed that a law be 
passed prohibiting postmasters from receiving and 
forwarding Abolition literature to any state in 
which its circulation was prohibited by the law of 
the state. The effect of such a measure would have 



LIKES AND DISLIKES 237 

been to subordinate the post-office to state law, and 
this was the very purpose he wished to accomplish ; 
but the complications of the scheme were so self- 
evident, that it failed to receive material support. 
In this speech he declared that if Congress passed 
any laws attempting to regulate slavery, the South 
would disregard them, invoking the right of state 
interposition, which had just been so successfully 
proclaimed by South Carolina. 

At the next session, when Clay, on January 27, 
1837, presented a memorial asking for a Congres- 
sional charter for the colonization society, so that it 
could receive gifts and bequests, Calhoun expressed 
the hope that the recpiest would be denied, and re- 
gretted that it had been brought before the Senate. 
The government should not notice, much less en- 
courage, the objects of the society, because nine- 
tenths of the Southern people disapproved of them. 
No human power could separate the blacks and the 
whites in the South. The blacks, being the inferior 
race, were the slaves of the whites. This condition 
could, if undisturbed, exist for all time, and upon 
its existence depended the existence of the South. 
The colonization society was a disturbing influence 
and did great mischief. 

On February 5, 1837, a few weeks before Congress 
adjourned, upon the presentation of a memorial 
from citizens of the District of Columbia, protesting 
against any action on the subject of slavery, Cal- 
houn was able to congratulate the Senate upon the 
favorable change which had taken place in the 



238 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

past twelvemonth. Abolition was advancing with 
strides which threatened the Union, but the ark of 
state rights had carried them through the difficulty. 
He had been ably supported by Republicans of 
the North and Abolition had received an effectual 
blow. It was an important epoch iu our history. 
Before the agitation, many Southerners had con- 
sidered slavery an evil to be tolerated but not de- 
fended ; now they believed it to be a great blessing 
to both whites and blacks. 



CHAPTER XVI 

CALHOUN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

The isolation of Calhoun after the nullification 
ordinance was rescinded was also the isolation of 
South Carolina, and for some years she refused to 
come within the sphere of activity of the political 
parties of the Union. At the election of 1832, her 
electoral votes for President were cast for John 
Floyd, of Virginia, governor of that state and an 
advocate of state sovereignty ; for Vice-President, 
Henry Lee, of Massachusetts, a wealthy Boston 
merchant, who had attracted attention as a free- 
trader. No other state cast a single vote for either 
him or Floyd. When Van Buren was elected 
in 1836, South Carolina voted for W. P. Mangum, 
of North Carolina, for President, and for John 
Tyler, of Virginia, for Vice-President. Maryland, 
Georgia and Tennessee also voted for Tyler, but no 
other state voted for Mangum. Van Buren' s in- 
augural address repeated a statement he had made 
before the election ;— that he was opposed to the 
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia 
without the consent of the slave states, and to the 
slightest interference with it in the states in which it 
already existed. He said in his first message to 
Congress that he was opposed to a national bank, 



240 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

and that the government could not lift the people 
out of their industrial distress : they had brought it 
upon themselves and must save themselves. This 
was precisely Calhoun's view. It was plain that 
continued enmity toward a President who spoke as 
Van Buren did was an untenable position. 

When the crash of the state bank and paper 
money system came, Calhoun could truthfully say 
that it was none of his doing, and that he had fore- 
told it. Congress was called together in special ses- 
sion in September, 1837, and the first question be- 
fore it was whether the pressing needs of the Treasury 
should not be met by postponing the payment of 
the fourth installment of the amount due the states 
under the distribution act. This was promptly 
agreed to by a vote of twenty-eight to seventeen, 
Calhoun voting aye. He was glad enough to stop 
the distribution, and if he had had his way, there 
never would have been any surplus in the Treasury, 
since he held that taxes should always be kept down 
to the bare needs of the government. In his speech 
ou the finances of the country on September 18, 
1837, Calhoun reviewed his connection with the 
United States Bank. He supported it in 1816, he 
said, because it was necessary to correct the dis- 
ordered condition of the currency which had fallen 
under the control of the states. In 1834, on the same 
principle, he had favored a short renewal of the 
charter, to avert the calamity which had later be- 
fallen the country. But the connection between the 
government and the bank had since been definitely 



CALHOUN'S AUTOBIOGEAPHY 241 

broken off, and the opportunity was afforded of be- 
ginning on a new and better basis. There should 
be no renewal of the connection. It existed, be- 
cause the government received bank-notes, thereby 
practically endorsing them and giving them circu- 
lation. The issue expanded and contracted accord- 
ing to the expansion and contraction of the fiscal 
actions of government ; and when these were great 
and sudden, catastrophe befell the whole system. 
The cause of the present state of things was the pro- 
tective tariff, which encouraged the industry of one 
portion of the Union at the expense of another 
and poured money into the Treasury beyond its needs. 
As for relief, he repeated what the President had 
said. The government could not give it. The pa- 
tient was young and vigorous and would overcome 
the attack, and he feared the doctor and his drugs 
much more than the disease. Frugality and econ- 
omy, helped by the growing crops, would enable the 
people to pay their debts. He proposed that after 
the next January it should be permissible to pay 
three-fourths of the money due the government in 
notes of specie-paying banks ; the following year 
one-half might be paid in such notes ; in 1840, 
one-quarter, and thereafter all sums must be paid 
in legal currency of the United States. Federal 
officers were to be the keepers and disbursers of 
the revenue, and sub-treasuries were to be estab- 
lished independent of the banks. This became 
known as the Independent Treasury system. The 
Democrats now hailed Calhoun as one of them- 



242 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

selves and followed his leadership. By a vote of 
twenty-six to twenty, his bill passed the Senate, 
but it failed in the House and Congress adjourned 
October 10th, having taken no decisive action. 
When it came together for the regular session in 
December, the battle was renewed. Again the 
President's message was pleasing to Calhoun, but 
again the Independent. Treasury Bill failed to pass. 
This time Calhoun himself voted against it, because 
there had been stricken from it a requirement 
that government dues must eventually be paid 
in gold or silver. On July 4, 1840, it was passed 
with the specie provision. In 1841 it was repealed 
by the Whigs, but was revived in 184G, and has re- 
mained a feature of our financial system ever since. 
The passage of the bill in 1840 was, in part, the 
result of a coalition of Van Buren and Calhoun. 
Early in the year, accompanied by a mutual friend, 
the latter called at the White House, and, shaking 
hands with Van Buren, said : "Mr. President, by 
your course as Chief Magistrate, you have removed 
the difference in our political relations; I have 
called to remove that in our personal." As Cal- 
houn explained to his daughter Anna, who, it seems, 
questioned the propriety of his thus showing friend- 
liness toward one whom he really despised, the sole 
basis of the personal relationship was political con- 
venience. He thought that, if his party did not act 
with Van Buren, it would be helping the Whigs 
into power, and then could expect to influence the 
course of neither party. Not only was the Inde- 



CALHOUN'S AUTOBIOGBAPHY 243 

pendent Treasury Bill passed, but a proposition to 
distribute revenue from the sale of public lands 
among the several states, to be used by them to ex- 
tinguish or diminish their debts, was defeated. 
There was manifested, also, a disposition to meet the 
tariff question, when it should come up, in an ac- 
commodating spirit, and the question of slavery was 
momentarily not before Congress. Northern men 
were found among Calhoun's supporters, and it was 
shown how easily the sections coalesced on matters 
other than slavery. His primary object was to keep 
the Treasury empty. The attention of the Demo- 
cratic party would then not be engrossed by the 
subject of spoils, and men would have time to de- 
vote themselves to principles. He gave his in- 
fluence, therefore, to Van Buren's reelection, and if 
it had been accomplished, would have had an over- 
weening power in his second term. The plans 
failed ; William Henry Harrison was elected, and 
when Calhoun went to Washington for the last ses- 
sion of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, he encountered 
the efforts of the Whigs to put forward the measures 
of the new administration. 

Following Calhoun's accordance with Van Buren, 
the legislature of South Carolina, on December 18, 
1840, adopted resolutions, publishing the reasons 
why the state had participated in the election of 
President and Vice-President, expressing approba- 
tion of Van Buren's course, especially in regard to 
the slavery question, declaring in favor of the Sub- 
Treasury system and against a United States bank, 



244 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

and pronouncing against a protective tariff. With 
obstinate persistency, the resolutions asserted on 
the last point " that a tariff to protect the in- 
dustry of one portion of the community, at the ex- 
pense of another, is a violation of the spirit and let- 
ter of the Constitution of the United States ; and 
when such a case occurs, the several states will de- 
cide for themselves the mode and measure of re- 
dress." They gave a certificate of approval 
to Calhoun, — resolving, "that this state has seen, 
with great satisfaction, the steady ami consistent 
adherence of her senator, John C. Calhoun, to (he 
well-known, avowed, and mature principles of the 
state, and they accord to him their deliberate and 
strong approval, for vindicating and upholding the 
settled and well-known doctrines of the state from 
which he holds his high commission." 

South Carolina and Calhoun were one ; he com- 
manded the confidence of his constituents as did no 
other senator ; they could count on each other, and 
no cloud of doubt ever seemed to come between 
them. The state was as one man governed by one 
mind, and the legislature appeared to boast of it, 
when it said : 

" The people of this state have cause to congratu- 
late themselves, that the party feuds which lately 
weakened the vigor of its counsels, have happily 
ceased, and that South Carolina now presents to the 
enemies of her policies and peace, an undivided 
front ; and is prepared, as she is resolved, to repel, 
by all proper means, every aggression upon her 



CALHOUN'S AUTOBIOGEAPHY 245 

rights as a sovereign republic, the instant that 
aggression is attempted." 

This manifesto of reconciliation was meant for the 
whole Union, and when it was formally presented 
to Congress in January, 1841, there was wide re- 
joicing, for the state still held a place high in the 
general esteem, because of its brilliant record in the 
past, 

Calhoun was not entirely sorry for Van Buren's 
defeat. It was a just retribution, he thought, for 
" all the old sins of Jackson's time," and in the end 
might be beneficial to reform ; but for the new 
President he had no regard, and he looked forward 
to an administration controlled wholly by Clay and 
other Federalists. It would be followed, he hoped, 
by a truly Democratic regime, with himself at its 
head. But when Congress met in extra session, 
May 31, 1841, pursuant to Harrison's call, it was 
greeted by a message from John Tyler, Harrison 
having died after he had been President for only a 
month, and before he had had a chance to do any- 
thing but buffet helplessly with the flood of office- 
seekers, which fairly swept him into his grave. 
Tyler had been elected by the Whigs, but they had 
nominated him with a view to attracting the votes 
of state rights men, and thus got the support of 
nearly all thq Southern states for the ticket. He 
was known to'be a strong friend of state sovereignty, 
and in 1832 had supported Calhoun in his opposition 
to the Force Bill ; but when his administration be- 
gan, Calhoun was in doubt what course the new 



246 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

President would follow. In the election, South 
Carolina had, under its leader's advice, cast away 
her votes for Vice-President, giving them to Taze- 
well of Virginia, who was not a candidate, rather 
than to Tyler, simply because he was the Whig 
candidate. On June 7th, soon after Congress met, 
Clay sharply defined the Whig program. The In- 
dependent Treasury law was to be repealed and a 
national bank erected in its place ; the proceeds of 
sales of public lands were to be distributed among 
the states, while revenue would be raised by increas- 
ing the duties on imports. The distribution scheme 
Calhoun regarded as "the most wicked and uncon- 
stitutional ever made ; if it should succeed, the gov- 
ernment will be subverted." The parties in the 
Senate were nearly evenly divided, and the obstruc- 
tive tactics of the minority prompted Clay to pro- 
pose a rule limiting debate. As this was a recogni- 
tion of the absolute right of the majority, it was pe- 
culiarly odious to Calhoun. 

As a result of his opposition to the distribution 
scheme, he was moved to offer an amendment to the 
preemption law which would have put at rest all 
questions on this point, simply by leaving the 
Federal government without any land to sell. On 
January 12, 1841, he proposed that the lands be 
ceded to the several states in which they lay, and 
he supported the proposition in several speeches, 
throwing strong light upon the peculiar cast of his 
mind and showing how his analytical habits had 
grown upon him, until he was prepared to make 



CALHOUN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 247 

every measure of government stand or fall as a 
syllogism. The Virginia act of cession of her 
" back lands" gave them "to the United States in 
Congress assembled," and prescribed that they 
should constitute "a common fund,'' meaning a fund 
for the benefit of the states in their combined Federal 
capacity ; therefore the fund could not lawfully be di- 
vided among the several states. Undoubtedly a ces- 
sion of the public land to them would have strength- 
ened them and weakened the Federal government, and 
that was an object with Calhoun. The states which 
would have profited were Alabama, Louisiana, 
Mississippi and Arkansas among the slave states, 
and Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Indiana among 
the free states ; so neither side would have gained 
in the matter of the extension of the area of slavery 
or freedom. But the slave states would have bene- 
fited by the strengthening of the cause of state 
sovereignty. The scheme did not find favor, how- 
ever, and was easily defeated. 

Only a part of the Whig plan could be carried 
out. The Independent Treasury law was repealed 
and a bill creating a national bank was passed, 
which, to the discomfiture and confusion of the 
Whigs, was vetoed by Tyler on August 16, 1841. 
To the consequent attacks on the President, Cal- 
houn replied with one of his most popular speeches. 
He discussed the veto power and upheld it as a 
great conservative influence calculated to protect 
the interests of the weak from the oppression of the 
strong. Being negative in its nature, the power 



248 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

could not well be abused. Several thousand copies 
of the speech were distributed, and Calhoun was 
well pleased with it, because it was in a line with 
an important feature of his nullification creed. 

Notwithstanding his satisfaction because of the 
veto, he was in doubt as to what position his party- 
should take. Tyler's cabinet was composed of men 
who called themselves Whigs, and Calhoun was 
afraid he might steer a middle course and attract to 
himself some who had opposed the Bank, thereby 
weakening the Calhoun party. Under these cir- 
cumstances he advised a policy of inaction, — to pro- 
pose few measures, simply supporting or opposing 
bills brought forward by the Whigs or the adminis- 
tration, as they might or might not accord with his 
principles. Tyler would in the end be forced to 
come to Calhoun. To the Whigs the fruits of their 
victory had turned to Dead Sea apples, and the 
special session of Congress adjourned, leaving them 
hopelessly demoralized. 

When Congress came together for the regular 
session in December, 1841, Calhoun still continued 
to play a waiting game, clearly perceiving the 
efforts which the President was making to create a 
party of his own, but alive to the fact that he could 
not do so. It was certainly not Calhoun's business 
to save him, and soon there were no administration 
senators and hardly half-a-dozen followers in the 
House. 

Calhouu had views of his own on the subject of 
redeeming the country, which he began to put into 



CALHOUN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 249 

effect immediately after the special session of Con- 
gress. They received a great impetus by the 
sweeping defeat of the Whigs in the fall elections. 
If ever he was to be President, now was the time. 
The victory, however, had come too soon — the 
election was so far off that it would be difficult to 
keep the Democratic forces together. "In poli- 
tics," said Calhoun in a letter of December 18, 
1841, "it is much more easy to gain the battle, 
than to reap its fruits." Nevertheless, two mouths 
later, on January 23, 1842, he wrote to Clemson, his 
son-in-law: "My own impression is, that events 
are taking the direction they [his friends] desire ; 
and that the difficulties of the country, and the dis- 
orders of the times are turning more and more the 
eyes of the community on me. I regard myself as 
a dispassionate judge ; for, personally, I have but 
little desire for the office [of President]." 

If he had little desire for the office, he had a 
strange way of manifesting it, for the concerted 
movements from time to time to bring about 
his candidacy were all, from the very beginning, 
encouraged and assisted by him. Undoubtedly, the 
most important of these efforts was that which was 
now makiug. 

The opeuiug of the campaign was the appearance 
in an Ohio newspaper of a careful defense of Cal- 
houn from the charge of being a disunionist. This 
was designed to overcome the odium which attached 
to him in some quarters because of his identification 
with nullification. Other important articles in 



250 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

Northern journals followed, some being written by 
Calhoun's friends and many at their instance, or at 
the instance of Calhoun himself. These articles 
were copied in Southern papers by arrangement 
with the editors, and were meant to give an impres- 
sion that Calhoun's candidacy was desired in the 
North. The impression was correct, for the better 
class of Democrats undoubtedly preferred Calhoun 
to Van Buren, who was his chief competitor. A 
canvass of the House of Representatives showed 
that about forty, half the whole number of Demo- 
cratic members, were Calhoun men. 

In 1843 there was published by Harper and 
Brothers of New York, a brochure of seventy -four 
pages, entitled Life of John C. Calhoun, Presenting a 
Condensed History of Political Events from 1811 to 
lSlf.3 ; and at the same time they printed iu sepa- 
rate numbers about thirty-eight of his speeches. 
Although no author's name appeared on the title 
page of the Life, the closing sentence declared that 
the sketch had been written by one who had been a 
friend of Calhoun for many years. The following 
was added in italics : ' ' his statements of facts and 
opinion he knows to be entirely authentic. ' ' The author- 
ship was commonly attributed to R. M. T. Hnnter, 
then a representative and later a senator from Vir- 
ginia, and accepted by him ; and, as the sketch was 
a good presentation of the career of one of the fore- 
most men in public life, Hunter's reputation was 
increased by the prevalent belief that he was the 
writer. He had, however, composed very little of 



CALHOUN'S AUTOBIOGEAPHY 251 

it, the real author being Calhoun himself. He first 
gave the manuscript to his friend and supporter in 
South Carolina, Robert Barnwell Rhett, and asked 
him to stand as its father, but Rhett was unwilling 
to have attributed to him work which he had not 
done himself and refused. Hunter was then called 
in, inserted a page or two, and accepted the author- 
ship. The whole transaction was conducted with 
perfect secrecy, and would never have been known 
at all had not Rhett disclosed it to Cralle after Cal- 
houn's death. Cralle, however, kept his knowledge 
to himself, but recently a letter dated October 25, 
1854, was found among his papers, containing the 
following to him from Rhett : 

" There is but one thing written by Mr. Calhoun 
that you ought not to publish as his and that is — 
'his life.' He wanted me to father it — but I told 
him that it was impossible for me directly or indi- 
rectly to allow any one to understand that I was the 
author of a publication which I had not written. 
Hunter and I read it over together in my house in 
Georgetown. He inserted about a page and a half 
and became the putative author ; and it has done 
more to lift him to his present position [a senator] 
than anything else in his public life." * 

An agreement for the sale of the Life and the 
Speeches was entered into between Joseph A. Sco- 
ville, Secretary of the Calhoun Central Committee 
(afterward Calhoun's private secretary) and the 
publishers, and although the Life did not have as 

1 Oralis MSS. 



252 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

large a circulation as had been anticipated, the pub- 
lishers reported in June, 1843, that 18,000 copies 
had been disposed of. 1 

This brochure, then, is Calhoun's own plea for the 
presidency, and it deserves more than passing no- 
tice. The events in his career on which he lays 
stress, are his helping to bring on the War of 1812 ; 
his opposition to the embargo, and his assistance in 
the raising of a navy ; his efforts for a sound na- 
tional currency and his administration of the War 
Department ; his resistance to all Federal interfer- 
ence with slavery and the reception of Abolition 
petitions ; and his advocacy of an economical 
public administration. "His public life," the 
pamphlet says, "may be divided into two grand 
epochs : the first, in which he put forth his whole 
energies to enable his countrymen to maintain their 
independence against foreign aggression ; and the 
second, in which he undertook the more difficult 
task of freeing their domestic legislation from those 
devices by which one was enabled to prey upon an- 
other." His explanation of his changing from a 
nationalist to a state rights man has been already set 
forth in these pages. He now believed the tariff of 
1816 to have been unconstitutional. He confessed 
that he had fallen into the same error which most of 
the young men of his party had embraced, and had 
supposed the money power of the government to be 
sufficient to support the scheme of internal improve- 
ments. In the leisure of the vice presidency, he 
1 Markoe Papers, Library of Congress MSS. 



CALHOUN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 253 

had begun a thorough study of the protective 
policy. 

Ehett, as we have seen, says that Hunter inserted 
a page and a half iu the sketch ; and the insertions, 
we are bound to assume, must be those portions in 
which Calhoun is extravagantly praised — as a man, 
for example, "distinguished by every trait that 
should win esteem and command admiration," as 
of u natural genius,'' as one who enjoys the confi- 
dence of the people to an extent " without a paral- 
lel in any other state, or in the case of any other 
public man." It is not conceivable that Calhoun 
wrote these and similar passages. Nevertheless, it 
cannot be denied that this new knowledge concern- 
ing the Life places him in the light of an eager 
seeker after an honor which should have been left to 
seek him. There was nothing wrong in the trans- 
action, but its disclosure undoubtedly is an obstruc- 
tion to the view of Calhoun standing upon an eleva- 
tion far above his contemporaries. 

And all his efforts were in vain. Van Buren's 
candidacy began actively before Calhoun's Mas 
fairly launched, and it was urged industriously up 
to the very time of the assembling of the convention. 
He had a majority of the delegates, Calhoun having 
been really defeated before they met. He refused 
to allow his name to go before them. He ob- 
jected on principle to nominations being made by 
such conventions, unless they were so constituted as 
clearly to voice the will of the people, instead of 
the will of political managers or office-brokers. The 



254 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

delegates should be elected by the people directly 
voting by districts, and each delegate should have a 
vote. The Democratic convention, about to be 
held, would be composed of men chosen by state 
conventions, the members of which had been se- 
lected by district or county conventions. Being the 
delegates of delegates, they would be three or four 
degrees removed from the people. The presidential 
candidate would be named by men who made poli- 
tics a trade, and who lived or expected to live upon 
the government. Calhoun had helped to abolish 
the system of nominating candidates by Congres- 
sional caucus, because the members were subject to 
the influence of public patronage ; but he had never 
intended to substitute a convention less near to the 
people or the states, less high in the character of its 
members, and more liable, to be corrupted than the 
caucus had been. He objected to it, also, because 
in choosing the candidate, it gave equal voice to 
states in which the party was weak with those in 
which it was strong, so that the former might ac- 
tually select the candidate, although there was no 
prospect of their voting for him. 

During the time he was thus a candidate, he con- 
tinued to perform his duties as a senator. A new 
tariff bill, more protectionist in its features than the 
compromise bill, was passed on August 30, 1842. 
Of course, he opposed it, and it caused much 
grumbling in the South ; but the tone was calm com- 
pared with what it had been ten years before. A 
more vital matter had in a measure dwarfed the 



CALHOUN'S AUTOBIOGEAPHY 255 

tariff question, and, besides, Calhoun hoped and be- 
lieved that the South could elect the next President 
and control the next Congress, when the bill might 
be repealed. 

The subject which gave the tariff a secondary 
place took an unlooked for development on January 
25, 1842, in the House of Representatives. "That 
mischievous bad old man," as Calhoun now called 
John Quincy Adams, being the champion of the 
right of petition, presented a paper signed by forty- 
six citizens of the town of Haverhill, praying for a 
dismemberment of the Union, giving as the main 
reason, " because a vast proportion of the resources 
of one section of the Union is annually drained to 
sustain the views and course of another section 
without any adequate return." The petitioners 
were Abolitionists, and this was their first open 
movement toward disunion. There was very little 
force back of them, but Calhoun thought otherwise, 
being, in fact, ready to believe anything bad of the 
Abolitionists. He wrote, February 4, 1842: "I 
have no doubt their object is disunion. There has 
always been a portion of the old Federal party in 
favor of it in New England." 

Having constituted himself the sleepless guardian 
of slavery, he was not less awake to foreign than to 
domestic assaults upon it, and the country which 
required to be watched the most carefully was Eng- 
land. Her course with respect to Texas will be 
noticed presently ; but she had on several occasions 
liberated slaves who accidentally and unavoidably 



256 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

came into her territory, and had steadily, refused 
to make compensation for them, giving as the reason 
the well-known fact that slavery was not permitted 
in her empire. On April 15, 1840, Calhoun brought 
the case of the brig Enterprise to the attention of 
Congress. While on a voyage from Norfolk to 
Charleston, she was cast on the Bermudas with a cargo 
of slaves, all of whom were liberated by the local 
authorities on habeas corpus proceedings. Calhoun 
introduced a set of resolutions ijrotesting against 
this action as a violation of international law, since 
it amounted to the sequestration of American prop- 
erty ; and although Henry Clay declared them in- 
opportune, and expressed regret that they had been 
brought forward, they were passed without dissent. 
Several similar cases were brought up by him. 
The subject, he said, when, on January 19, 1842, he 
discussed the case of the Creole, was more important 
than any other that could arise between the two 
governments. 

Calhoun now determined to return to private life 
and there await the issue of his candidacy for a 
nomination to the presidency. He had served con- 
tinuously from 1811, for more than thirty years, and 
he wished a period of repose. In the latter part of 
the year 1842, he sent his resignation to the legisla- 
ture, to take effect at the close of the Congress then 
sitting, and the legislature accepting it, at the same 
time nominated him for the presidency. His pri- 
vate affairs, however, demanded his attention. His 
agricultural interests had been supplemented by the 



CALHOUN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 257 

acquisition of some mining interests iu Georgia, and 
a rich vein of gold in one of these mines had caused 
him for a short time to believe that great wealth 
would probably be his. It turned out otherwise and 
he was not disappointed. He was also much inter- 
ested in the plans being made for railroads in the 
South, believing that they Avould have an important 
effect in causing different parts of that section to act 
together politically ; but when he was offered the 
presidency of a new road, he declined it, feeling his 
inaptitude for the business. He took up the steady 
superintendence of his farms, but beside entertaining 
many visitors, found time for pursuing the task of 
writing out his views on government. 



CHAPTER XVII 

SECKETAItY OF STATE 

While Calhoun was in retirement at " Fort Hill," 
lie received word on March 9, 1844, of the tragic 
death, a few weeks before, of the Secretary of State, 
Abel P. Upshur, and at once the thought entered his 
mind that he would be called to fill the vacant 
place. He would have preferred to take charge of 
the Texas and Oregon negotiations, then pending, 
by themselves, while some one else performed the 
ordinary duties of the State Department ; but this 
impracticable arrangement was not suggested to the 
President. On March 6, 1844, Calhoun's name was 
sent to the Senate, and it was immediately confirmed 
by a unanimous vote. He came to the city without 
his family, but the next autumn (November, 1844), 
he returned with Mrs. Calhoun and three of his 
children and took lodgings at the new United States 
Hotel. 

When he became Secretary of State, he was fifty- 
eight years old ■ and his health was breaking. He 
had obstinate colds, and in February, 1845, was at- 
tacked by a congestive fever, which left him feeble. 
Thereafter he never enjoyed the comfort of good 
health, and was conscious that his physical con- 
dition was declining. His gaunt figure became 
leaner than ever ; his bushy hair grew grayer ; but 



SECRETARY OF STATE 259 

his eyes shone more brightly, lighted by the un- 
earthly fire of a consuming purpose. 

Before he entered the cabinet, there had been no 
intimacy between him and Tyler, and they did not 
now become warm friends. He was too much 
Tyler's superior to hold him in high regard, but 
their relations were amicable, and Calhoun found it 
worth his while to make himself agreeable to the 
President's young bride. At a dinner-party at the 
White House, he captivated her, even quoting love- 
verses — au amazing act on the part of this un- 
romantic man, and the only recorded occasion of 
his straying into such strange fields. 

Tyler had not, in fact, so spontaneously thought 
of Calhoun as his Secretary of State, as Calhoun had 
thought of himself for the office, and had really been 
forced into making the appointment before he had 
decided on it. Henry A. Wise, the President's 
alter ego, on his own responsibility, asked Senator 
MacDuffie to offer the post to Calhoun, and Tyler, 
fearing the consequences of repudiating Wise's ac- 
tion, accepted it with secret unwillingness. He 
could not have doubted Calhoun's fitness, but he 
and Upshur had been at great pains to secure, as 
they thought, a two-thirds majority of the Senate 
for the projected annexation of Texas, and a treaty 
signed by Calhoun, a candidate for the presidency 
and consequently a target for attack, might arouse 
opposition in quarters which had thus far been 
friendly. 

To the project of annexing Texas, Calhoun was 



260 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

fully committed, but the father of annexation 
neither he nor any other man was. When events 
in that state began to be controlled by Americans, 
annexation became certain, the question beiug 
merely when it would take place. For Texas to re- 
main independent was impossible, in view of its 
geographical position, and it was equally impossible 
that the American adventurers who were in control 
of its destinies, would permit it to remain under the 
dominion of any other country than their own. 
Nevertheless, Calhoun had taken the lead in urging 
the annexation, and it must be admitted that he had 
from the beginning fully appreciated the conse- 
quences which would probably follow that action. 
On May 12, 183(5, when Congress was discussing an 
appropriation for seacoast defenses, he remarked 
that it might be found that the money would be 
needed, not for the shore-line, but in the Southwest. 
Texas being then at war with Mexico, there was no 
doubt of his meaning, and on May 23d, he said : 
"He had made up his mind not only to recognize 
the independence of Texas, but for her admission to 
this Union. . . . There were powerful reasons 
why Texas should be a part of this Union. The 
Southern states, owning a slave population, were 
deeply interested in preventing that country from 
having the power to annoy them, and the navigat- 
ing and manufacturing interests of the North and 
East were equally interested in making it a part of 
this Union." ' 

1 Cong. Debates, Vol. XII, p. 1531. 



SECRETARY OF STATE 261 

Among his slavery resolutions of December 27, 
1836, as we Lave seen, was one declaring that a re- 
fusal to permit the Southern or Western states to 
extend their limits by annexing new territory be- 
cause it would extend slavery, would be contrary to 
that equality of rights and advantages which the 
Constitution was intended to secure to all the states. 
Calhouu's motives for favoring annexation were 
simple. If Texas did not fall to the United States, 
it would come under English control, he thought ; 
it was even a more important strategic point than 
Cuba, and to take that island would be a necessity 
if there should ever be a prospect of Great Britain's 
possessing herself of it. Texas as English territory 
would be a point from which that government could 
strike a blow at slavery. Calhoun denied that his 
main object in advocating annexation was to secure 
additional slave territory ; but this was the main 
object of his party, and it was nothing discreditable 
to the apostle of slavery, who deplored the lack of 
equilibrium betweeu the free and slave states, that 
he should wish the weight of Texas added on the 
slavery side. 

On October 23, 1843, Calhoun wrote a private and 
confidential letter to Francis Wharton, of Philadel- 
phia, frankly explaining his views on the subject of 
annexation aud the treaty. It was, he said, a ques- 
tion of life or death, and opposition to it at the 
North was due to the fact that the people there had 
not sufficiently weighed the consequences of Great 
Britain's policy and the obligation of all sections k> 



262 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

defend the South. The South had stood by the 
North iu the [Revolution, iu 1812, and in the ques- 
tion of the Maine boundary ; but now the North was 
unwilling to reciprocate. This condition of affairs 
spoke badly for the permanence of the Union. If 
the North cared nothing about the Southern interest 
in maintaining the relation between the races, the 
South should know it. He said further : 

"If we shall have the folly or wickedness to per- 
mit Great Britain to plant the lever of her power 
between the United States and Mexico, on the 
northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico, we give her 
a place to stand on, from which she can [brave ? ] at 
pleasure the American continent and control its 
destiny. There is not a vacant spot left on the 
globe, not excepting Cuba, to be seized by her, so 
well calculated to further the boundless schemes of 
her ambition and cupidity. If we should permit 
her to seize on it, we shall deserve the execration of 
posterity. Eeject the treaty, and refuse to annex 
Texas, and she will certainly seize on it. A treaty 
of alliance commercial and political will be forth- 
with proposed by Texas to her, and I doubt not ac- 
cepted." 

His remark about the assistance given by the 
South in the ratification of the treaty of Wash- 
ington, was correct. He had, as Webster ex- 
pressed it, " distinguished himself " by his effective 
support, especially in his speech delivered on 
August 28, 1842. He then said that if the treaty 
was satisfactory to Maine, the Senate ought to ratify 



SECKETABY OF STATE 263 

it. He approved of the treaty in itself; but it was 
peculiarly pleasing to hiui to have the Senate do 
what one state wanted it to do, because it enhanced 
the importance of that state. So far as the bound- 
ary was concerned, he was convinced that the line 
originally contended for by Maine, was the true 
one ; but he was equally certain that the only prac- 
ticable settlement of the subject was by a com- 
promise, especially as the United States had con- 
ceded that it permitted of doubt by stipulating in 
the treaty of Ghent that the question might be sub- 
mitted to arbitration. The boundary was that of a 
state, and a part of the boundary of the United 
States only as it was the boundary of one of the 
states. The soil and the sovereignty of Maine were 
in dispute, and it belonged to her to say what her 
rights and interests were. The United States was 
bound to acquiesce, unless to do so would be incon- 
sistent with the honor, safety or interests of the rest 
of the Union. The treaty was advantageous gener- 
ally, and the omission from it of settlement of the 
Northwest boundary was not an insuperable objec- 
tion. The territory in dispute in that quarter was 
then held in joint occupancy under the treaty of 
Ghent. If the United States attempted to assert ex- 
clusive right of occupancy, the loss of the territory 
would be inevitable ; because Great Britain could 
concentrate a much larger force, naval and military, 
in a much shorter time and at less expense than 
could the United States. Great Britain could bring 
her force there by water from China, and we must 



264 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

send ours over thousands of miles of trackless desert. 
This would not always be the case, because our 
population was steadily advancing across the conti- 
nent, and what we now claimed would after awhile 
quietly fall into our hands. Patience and time 
would give the fruit to the United States. The 
treaty provided for joint action to suppress the 
slave-trade ; the two governments were to remon- 
strate with other powers on the subject of the im- 
portation of slaves, a provision which Calhoun said 
he Mould have preferred to have omitted, because 
he did not wish to interfere with other powers. He 
stated specifically, however, that he was opposed to 
the trade in slaves, and thought no country ought 
to import more of them. He admitted, also, that 
it was an objection to the treaty to have in it no 
basis of settlement of the Creole case and similar 
cases of failure on the part of Great Britain to pay 
for slaves which had been liberated ; but he held 
out the hope of an adjustment of these differences 
at a later date. 

As Secretary of State, Calhoun took up the Texas 
negotiations where Upshur had left them off. An 
envoy from Texas was actually on his way to Wash- 
ington to negotiate a treaty of annexation when the 
Secretary died, and Calhoun completed the work 
within a month after he had entered the office. 

There was a feature of the scheme which caused ap- 
prehension, but it was not Calhoun who was pri- 
marily responsible for it. Before the treaty was 
negotiated, Upshur had assured the Texan envoy 



SECRETARY OF STATE 265 

that as soon as it was signed, American troops 
would be moved into the state, for protection 
against Mexican invasion. This point was agreed 
to by the new Secretary and was put into effect. It 
certainly did not amount to making war upon 
Mexico, and was not an unreasonable or improper 
arrangement, if the treaty itself had reason or pro- 
priety. 

The document went to the Senate on April 22d, but 
the leading senators were maneuvering for position 
with a view to capturing the presidency, and they 
sacrificed everything to that purpose. They were 
afraid of the Texas question, uncertain what would 
be the effect of the treaty's acceptance, and certain 
that if they ratified it, Calhoun would receive 
the credit. There was nothing to be gained 
by Whigs or Democrats in approving a measure 
which had originated with Tyler's administration, 
and Van Buren's, Clay's and Jackson's friends all 
opposed anything that Calhoun did. The vote for 
the treaty which Upshur was confident he had se- 
cured, disappeared, and it was rejected by an over- 
whelming maj ority. A specious reason was given by 
its opponents. They declared that it would produce 
war, and that the Senate and Executive had not the 
constitutional power to make war. Nevertheless, a 
few months after the rejection of the document, those 
who had brought it about voted for annexation by 
joint resolution, having ascertained in the meantime 
that this was a popular policy. Andrew Jackson, 
in 1843, wrote a letter which appeared in the Rich- 



266 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

mond Enquirer, of March 22, 1844, favoring annex- 
ation. It was charged that it had been obtained in 
order to assist Calhoun's candidacy for the presi- 
dency, although Jackson was known to favor Van 
Buren. No one could have reasonably supposed 
that the old man favored Calhoun, since his hatreds 
were not short-lived. On his death-bed the follow- 
ing year (1845) when Dr. Edgar asked him what he 
would have done with Calhoun and his associates if 
they had proceeded to the full lengths which they 
proposed in the nullification movement, he answered : 
" Hung them, sir, as high as Hainan. They should 
have been a terror to traitors to all time, and pos- 
terity would have pronounced it the best act of my 
life." 

The effect of the rejection of the treaty and of 
the precipitation of the question upon the country 
was disastrous to the leading candidates, Van Buren 
and Clay. Both wrote letters opposing immediate 
annexation, with the result that Van Buren was de- 
feated for the nomination, which went unexpectedly 
to James K. Polk, an annexationist, and the Dem- 
ocratic platform declared for the addition of Texas 
to the Union. Clay received the Whig nomination, 
but went down in defeat in the election as the advo- 
cate of an unpopular policy. 

Before Calhoun became Secretary of State in 
June, 1843. certain American Abolitionists being in 
London in attendance on what was called a "World's 
Convention," told Lord Aberdeen, British Secretary 
of State for Foreign Affairs, that if he wished to 



SECEETAEY OF STATE 267 

abolish slavery in the United States, he should begin 
by abolishing it in Texas ; and on August 18, 18-13, 
there was an important debate in the House of 
Lords between Lord Brougham and Lord Aberdeen, 
clearly indicating that Great Britain was making 
an effort to induce Mexico to recognize the inde- 
pendence of Texas provided that state would abol- 
ish slavery. The object openly avowed by Lord 
Brougham and tacitly admitted by Lord Aberdeen 
was by securing abolition in Texas to secure it ulti- 
mately in America. All of these facts were known 
to Calhoun, and prepared him for writing the note 
which he sent Richard Packenham, the British 
Minister at Washington, April 18, 1844, when he 
informed him that the treaty of annexation had 
been sent to the Senate. Taking notice of Lord 
Aberdeen's official statement that, while Great 
Britain did not presume to interfere in the internal 
affairs of the United States, she nevertheless desired 
and was constantly endeavoring to procure, the 
" general abolition of slavery throughout the world," 
Calhoun's note said that this statement aroused ap- 
prehension, and he pointed out to the United States 
the danger of abolition in Texas. Thus far the 
Secretary was standing on defensible ground, but he 
went on to argue that " it would be neither defen- 
sible nor wise to free the blacks in America — that, 
in all instances in which the states have changed the 
former relation between the two races, the condition 
of the African, instead of being improved, has be- 
come worse. They have been invariably sunk in 



268 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

vice and pauperism, accompanied by the bodily 
and mental afflictions incident thereto — deafness, 
blindness, insanity and idiocy, to a degree without 
example ; while, in all other states, which retained 
the ancient relation between them, they have im- 
proved greatly in every respect— in number, com- 
fort, intelligence, and morals, as the following facts, 
taken from such sources [the census statistics] will 
serve to illustrate." Then he gave the figures to 
show that there was a greater proportion of defectives 
and dependents among the free blacks of the North 
than among the slaves of the South. Undoubtedly, 
Calhoun believed all this ; but as Secretary of State 
he was part of a government which included under 
it free as well as slave states, and he was not within 
his rights when he put the American government 
on record before a foreign nation as deprecating 
the freedom which was the law in more than one- 
half of the country. Moreover, the figures of the 
census were under suspicion, and were stoutly as- 
serted by many to be false. His object in sending 
the note, and communicating it to Congress with 
the treaty, was to solidify the slave- interest for the 
treaty ; but from the beginning, the sole object of 
the annexationists was to save and strengthen the 
South and slavery, and the ground upon which the 
North was expected to support the policy, was that 
the Union would be made stronger if the South were 
stronger. On April 27, 1844, Calhoun said in a 
note to Packenham : "It [the treaty of annexation] 
was made necessary in order to preserve a domestic 



SECBETAEY OF STATE 269 

institution, placed under the guaranty of their [the 
states] respective constitutions, and deemed essential 
to their safety and prosperity." 

To preserve this domestic institution was the main 
reason why Calhoun had become Secretary of State. 
On August 7, 1844, he instructed Edward Everett, 
envoy at London, concerning the case of seven 
negroes who had committed murder and robbery in 
east Florida and escaped to Nassau. The colonial 
court refused to deliver them up, because it did not 
know the grounds upon which they were indicted. 
"What may constitute the crime of murder in 
Florida," said the court, "maybe far from doing 
so according to the British laws, or even to the laws 
of the Northern states of America. ' ' This was con- 
strued by Calhoun as meaning that the court held 
that murder and robbery committed by slaves escap- 
ing from their masters were not murder and robbery 
under British law. Was Great Britain going to 
support this view? He could imagine only one 
ground for doing so, which was that property in 
man was so repugnant to the moral code that it 
could not be made legal, although sanctioned by 
the laws of the country in which it existed. On 
September 25, 1844, he had another opportunity. 
Senator Walker, of Mississippi, had introduced 
certain resolutions asking the President whether 
Great Britain had passed any legislation extending 
her criminal jurisdiction to the United States, and 
whether she had issued orders to her diplomatic and 
consular officers to inquire into the condition of any 



270 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

portion of our population. The suspected inquiry 
related to the condition of the slaves, aud the 
criminal jurisdiction alluded to was an act of Parlia- 
ment meant to prohibit British subjects in foreign 
countries from owning slaves. Although Walker's 
resolutions had not been acted upon by the Senate, 
Calhoun sent the inquiry to Everett so that he might 
be prepared to answer it if it should pass. His 
policy on the subject of slavery was to be bold and 
persistently aggressive, wherever opposition to the 
institution could be found. 

When Calhoun took up the Oregon negotiations, 
he was playing a higher role, for the question was 
as yet unvexed by slavery and he managed it as a 
national statesman. On July 22, 1844, Great Brilain 
opened the case ; but the Secretary of State did not 
reply to the British note for a full month, saying in 
excuse for his delay that he had not had time be- 
fore. On September 3d he wrote to Packenham, 
reviewing the whole controversy aud placing the 
ease of the United States on firm ground. 

He was perfectly familiar with his subject and 
had announced what he conceived to be the true 
policy of the United States in his speech of Au- 
gust 28, 1842, already noticed, which he later elab- 
orated in a speech on January 24, 1843, opposing the 
bill to assert the ownership of the whole of Oregon. 
He did not deviate from this policy now ; but hav- 
ing stated the case of the United States, wished 
it to be disturbed as little as possible. ' ' Time is act- 
ing for us," he said in his speech of January 24th, 



SECRETAEY OF STATE 271 

"and if we shall have the wisdom to trust its 
operation, it will assert and maintain our right 
with resistless force, without costing a cent of 
money or a drop of blood." Unfortunately, the 
party with which he acted would not trust to time, 
and the convention that nominated James K. Polk 
for President, adopted a platform asserting the right 
of the United States to the whole of Oregon. 

Calhoun did not help to nominate Polk. Van 
Buren had a clear majority of the delegates and 
Calhoun had distinctly refused to permit his 
name to be presented to the convention. As the 
preliminary contest had been between him and Van 
Buren, his friends threw their influence against his 
rival, aud Polk's nomination was pleasing to him 
and them because it meant a triumph of the annexa- 
tion wing of the Democratic party. The platform 
declared for Texas, and South Carolina cast her 
electoral votes for Polk. His election meant 
annexation ; but Congress had agreed to it before 
he became President. The joint resolution having 
passed by a large majority, was signed by Tyler the 
day before his administration closed. Calhoun was 
criticized for thus saving to himself and Tyler the 
glory for the accomplishment of their long-cherished 
design, but Polk appears to have thought the act a 
proper one, and being consulted, made no objection 
to the carrying out of the program. Here was a 
notable ending to Calhoun's career as an executive 
officer. Through his instrumentality an enormous 
area had been added to the South. The result had 



272 JOHN O. CALHOUN 

been attained without war ; but there were ominous 
signs that the act of annexation would carry in its 
train consequences of the most momentous char- 
acter, and Calhoun wished to remain as Secretary 
of State to manage them. Polk, however, did not 
intend to make his administration a stepping- 
stone for a rival's use in succeeding him, so he 
appointed James Buchanan Secretary of State and 
offered Calhoun the mission to England, which, of 
course, he declined, and soon after the inauguration 
in the spring of 1845, he returned to " Fort Hill." 

There had been no rupture between him and Polk, 
but he was disappointed that he had not been asked 
to continue at the head of the Department of State. 
His followers thought he had been treated badly, 
and the English mission which he refused, his 
friends, Franklin H. Elmore and Francis W. 
Pickens, also rejected. Calhoun's position in the 
country had now become so exalted that it would 
have been impossible for him to serve under any 
man without overshadowing him. As Tyler's 
Secretary of State, he had completely eclipsed that 
unfortunate person, and Polk, with a very moder- 
ate reputation, would have had little opportun- 
ity to improve it with the commanding figure of 
Calhoun standing beside him. "It is not in the 
power of Mr. Polk to treat me badly," wrote Calhoun 
to his daughter on May 22, 1845. " I would consider 
it, at least, as much of a favor to him for me to re- 
main in office under his administration, as he could 
to me, to invite me to remain ;" and he said truly 



SECEETAEY OF STATE 273 

that he could not have stayed at his post after Polk 
had announced his policy regarding the tariff and 
the Oregon question. When the difficulties sur- 
rounding this question thickened, it was suggested 
that Calhoun be again urged to take the English 
mission with full power to adjust the controversy 
and make a commercial treaty. Under these 
circumstances, he would have felt obliged to accept, 
but again Polk did not favor the scheme. 

So Calhoun returned to his work as an author, 
and enjoyed for a brief period his last respite from 
official cares. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

PEACE AND WAR 

When Calhoun left Washington, he did not in- 
tend to return. He told Francis Wharton in con- 
versation on February 20th that he was determined 
not to go back to the Senate, as his health was de- 
clining and he wished to finish the work on political 
economy on which he was engaged. He believed, 
therefore, that "Fort Hill" was henceforth to be 
his final and permanent abode. 

It became more than ever a Mecca to Southerners ; 
and here appropriately may be put down the im- 
pression made by the prophet upon a young divinity 
student, Rev. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. 1 He 
first saw Calhoun in the Episcopal Church at Pen- 
dleton. Mrs. Calhoun, with a flock of children, 
passed up the aisle, followed by her husband, a 
tall, angular man who looked more like a Pendleton 
farmer than a great statesman. After service 
Mr. Pinckney was introduced to him, and the mo- 
ment he spoke, the young man felt that he was in 
the presence of genius. "I have never seen," he 
says, "in any other countenance so marked a 
transition from perfect repose to intense activity. 
When he addressed you, the quiescent features 
beamed with intellectual radiance. It threw 

1 In Lippincott's Magazine for July, 1898. 



PEACE AND WAR 275 

around the man an ethereal, indescribable charm." 
This was due chiefly to the brilliancy of his eyes. 
"I have heard lively debates between intimate 
friends as to their color. Some said they were 
hazel, others maintained they were blue, while 
others asserted that they were gray ; and all were 
right." Mr. Pinckney often met the great man at 
the dinner-parties given in the countryside. "His 
conversational talents," he says, "were among his 
highest gifts. He was more admired by his friends 
and neighbors than by any other fellow citizens. 
They who met him on the most intimate terms 
honored, trusted, and loved him most. They felt 
his superiority, and cheerfully sat at his feet. His 
influence was largely due to his colloquial powers." 

He managed his farm with practical ability, in 
spite of his theoretical cast of mind, and required of 
his agents good results. He was an active member 
of the Farmers' Society at Pendleton. He con- 
trolled his slaves kindly, but firmly, and required 
honest labor of all. "An accomplished lady of 
Massachusetts," says Mr. Pinckney, "a frequent 
guest at his house, is credited with the remark that 
the best argument Mr. Calhoun could make for 
slavery was to invite his friends to ' Fort Hill.' " 

"His originality," Mr. Pinckney says further, 
" impressed me the more I saw of him. He seldom 
quoted books or the opinions of others. A rapid 
reader, he would absorb the congenial thoughts of 
an author and reject whatever did not assimilate 
with his own mental habits. His mind always 



276 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

seemed to work from within, by spontaneous im- 
pulse, not by external influences, either educational, 
social, or political. It drove on its rapid way like 
some mighty automatic engine, without friction, 
without noise, apparently without ever stopping 
for fuel or water." An opinion of his gifts 
which opens an interesting but purely imaginative 
field of conjecture, was expressed privately to 
Mr. Pinckney by R. W. Barnwell, who succeeded 
Calhoun in the Senate, and who had an intimate 
knowledge of his mental qualities. "Mr. Cal- 
houn," he said, "should have devoted his life to 
authorship rather than to politics. He would have 
been the most original and philosophical writer that 
America has produced, and would have left a far 
stronger impress upon the public mind." 

Soon after his return to "Fort Hill," he made an 
effort to borrow $30,000 from Abbott Lawrence, the 
Boston capitalist, who although a Whig in politics 
was always his warm friend. His son was now as- 
sociated with him in his farming and they proposed 
to pay the loan by delivering annually 100,000 
pounds of picked cotton, which he calculated would 
be worth six cents per pound. His object in seek- 
ing the loan is not known ; but it was probably a 
desire to invest in the railroad enterprises which at 
this time he was actively encouraging. Lawrence 
viewed Calhoun's scheme as a bad business prop- 
osition, but he and his friends were willing to 
advance the money to oblige him. Learning of 
this, Calhoun promptly withdrew his request. Un- 



PEACE AND WAR 277 

less the loan could be made on terms mutually ad- 
vantageous, lie would not accept it. The transac- 
tion shows with what scrupulous care he strove to 
keep his personal finances from beiug improved by 
his public position. 

In small affairs he was not always able to prevent 
the respect iu which he was held by the people from 
contributing to his personal convenience. In the 
autumn of 1845, when he went to attend the Mem- 
phis Convention to consider ways aud means of 
developing the natural resources of the Southern 
and Western states, he received oh his journey 
there and back, from people of all parties and 
classes, marks of consideration which touched him 
deeply. Not even Jackson himself had been shown 
greater honors, and it was Jackson's country. 
Every town to which he came made him its guest, 
and passed him through without expense. 

Soon after arriving home from this convention, it 
was apparent to him that events had taken a form 
which demanded his return to official life. The 
country looked to him in its need and the call was 
wide-spread and flattering, coming from Whigs as 
well as Democrats. His followers wished him back 
in the Senate because they thought the addition to 
his fame which he would surely win, would en- 
able them even yet to put him in nomination for 
the presidency. 

The Albany regency, with Van Buren at its head, 
was under a cloud, and it was believed that James 
Buchanan, the new Secretary of State, would soon 



278 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

retire to become a judge of the Supreme Court and 
that Calhoun would agaiu enter the cabinet. A de- 
termined and carefully planned effort was made by 
his friends to arrange for his nomination as Polk's 
successor. He had a following of free-traders in 
New York, where there was a standing Calhoun 
committee. It was determined to start, in that 
city, a Calhoun newspaper which, when he should 
become President, would be moved to Washington 
to be the administration organ, but the necessary 
funds could not be raised. His followers were un- 
selfishly devoted to him and his principles, and 
were not like the self-seeking spoilsmen who worked 
so lustily for his rivals. Pennsylvania always 
looked kindly upon him, and even in New England 
his course on the Oregon question gave him pres- 
tige. On March 30, 1846, Abbott Lawrence intro- 
duced to him William H. Prescott, the historian, 
and Charles Sumner, who wished to know him and 
held his character and abilities in high estimation. 
Lawrence himself said there was no man with whom 
he desired more to have social converse. 

Calhoun's hopes of the presidency revived, and it 
was his conviction that the times required his pres- 
ence in the Senate. One of the senators from his 
state was the Daniel E. Huger who had so valiantly 
fought against him in 1832, but Huger was now a 
Calhoun man and he willingly resigned to make 
place for the leader. In December Calhoun left 
"Fort Hill" with his wife and daughter Cornelia 
for another residence in Washington. 



PEACE AND WAR 279 

He had a clear idea of what ought to be done in 
relation to our foreign affairs, and it was that which 
the administration was not doing. The Oregon 
question should be kept in the background, since 
the position of the United States became stronger by 
every day of delay, because American settlers were 
pouring into the territory and taking possession of 
it. Left by herself, without hope of making com- 
mon cause with England against the United States, 
Mexico would not dare to go to extremities. She 
had already failed in her contest with Texas alone, 
and would hesitate long before risking an encounter 
with the United States. Calhoun's treaty had not 
defined the boundaries of Texas, leaving the ques- 
tion for subsequent negotiation, and the joint reso- 
lution had also been silent on this point. If it could 
be kept out of sight, there was good reason for sup- 
posing that Mexico might be brought to acquiesce 
in the annexation. Calhoun was convinced that 
war could be avoided and he always believed that if 
he had been continued as Secretary of State, it would 
not have taken place. The contrast between his and 
Buchanan's management of the foreign affairs of the 
nation, was noticed and increased his reputation. 

Polk seemed to desire a war with Mexico and 
did everything to make it inevitable. On January 
13, 1846, he secretly ordered General Taylor to ad- 
vance his force to the Rio Grande. Calhoun knew 
nothing of this order for several months, and when 
he heard of it fully realized that it rendered the 
situation perilous in the extreme, for the territory 



2S0 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

which Taylor was to occupy was claimed by 
Mexico, and Texas herself had offered to arbitrate 
the question of ownership. No one could truly say 
it was certainly a part of that state. It was 
impossible that even a weak power like Mexico 
could submit to being thus robbed without re- 
sistance. The force back of the robbers was too 
strong for Calhoun, being, in fact, composed largely 
of his own followers, and he could not control it, 
but neither could it control him. 

In dealing with the Oregon question, he was more 
fortunate. Polk was elected to the presidency 
upon a party platform which asserted that " all 
Oregon" belonged to the United States, the 
boundary being the 54° 40' parallel of north 
latitude; but while "fifty-four forty or fight" 
made a good cry for a political campaign, many 
who voted for Polk did not take it seriously. Hehini- 
self never thought beyond political platforms, and 
the motive of all his actions was the immediate polit- 
ical advantage which he and his party would derive. 
The day before his inauguration, Calhoun hinted to 
him that he would do well not to agitate the Oregon 
question, but he brought it forward with all the 
solemn importance which attaches to a policy when 
announced in a President's inaugural address. It 
was noticeable, however, as the only loophole of 
escape from the serious consequences of his rash- 
ness, that he proclaimed American ownership of 
"Oregon," which might not necessarily mean a 
claim to "all Oregon," 



PEACE AND WAR 281 

Whether " all Oregon" belonged to the United 
States was a question, the answer to which was 
hopelessly lost in disputes over conflicting claims to 
priority of discovery ; but there was hardly ground 
to dispute that Americans had first occupied the 
territory up to the forty-ninth degree of latitude. 

The country which was now a bone of contention, 
had for many years been treated with indifference by 
both England and the United States, and for a long 
time American statesmen believed that there were 
no interests worthy of serious consideration west of 
the Rocky Mountains. Nevertheless, when the 
peace of 1814 was made, Great Britain was required 
to yield up the far western posts taken during the 
war, and in 1818 a convention was agreed to by 
which all land west of the Rocky Mountains 
claimed by both countries was left open to settle- 
ment by the citizens of both for ten years. In 
1827, it was still apparent that agreement on the 
subject of boundaries could not be reached, so the 
convention of 1818 was continued with a proviso 
that either country could, on six months' notice, 
withdraw from it. Iu the meantime the importance 
of the territory increased. In 1832 a small baud of 
Americans settled in the valley of the Willamette, 
south of the Columbia River ; in 1837 a report was 
laid before Congress showing the great value of the 
country, and in 1838 a bill was introduced to or- 
ganize a territorial government. 

The agitation to terminate the convention of 1818 
and 1827 then began. In 1811 it became known that 



282 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

the British Hudson's Bay Company was importing 
settlers into the territory, and the American inhabit- 
ants sought actively for recognition. In the 
meantime England and the United States had 
amicably settled the northeastern boundary ques- 
tion by the treaty of Washington, and the way was 
clear for taking up the northwestern boundary dis- 
pute. But opposition to England, the traditional 
enemy of the United States, was always popular 
with voters, and to espouse what seems to be 
the American side in an international question 
has always been a good way to win elections ; 
so a political party took over the Oregon con- 
troversy as an asset, and thereafter it became 
extremely difficult to settle in a calm and deliber- 
ative spirit. Back of the clamor for "all Ore- 
gon," however, there was a healthy sentiment of 
which Calhoun was the spokesman, insisting that 
territory actually settled by Americans should not 
be given up. 

When Secretary of State, he had dealt with 
the subject on a broad basis of statesmanship, as it 
was not then a party question. In reply to Sir 
Kichard Packenham's proposals of July 22, 1844, 
he had taken up the matter from the very beginning 
and had made a most elaborate presentation of the 
case of the United States. He declined the British 
offer of the forty-ninth parallel as the boundary 
and laid claim to the entire region drained by the 
Columbia River. Our right rested upon our own 
discoveries, he declared, and the title which we 



PEACE AND WAR 283 

had purchased from France and Spain with Lou- 
isiana and the Floridas. Captain Grey had 
discovered the river in 1792 ; Lewis and Clark's 
expedition had confirmed the discovery in 180-4 ; 
John Jacob Astor had settled the country in 1811 ; we 
had purchased all the previous titles which were in 
France and Spain, and had a connecting claim of 
title stronger than all opposing titles. The note 
was clear and well constructed. The arguments 
were not new, but it was the best exposition of the 
case of the United States which had thus far been 
made. On January 31st he declined to arbitrate 
the dispute, because he thought it could be settled 
by ordinary diplomatic methods. 

A few months later Secretary Buchanan took up 
the matter, and in the place of Calhoun's reason- 
able policy, substituted a policy of bold pre- 
tense, which had for its main object the strength- 
ening of the Democratic party. On July 12, 1845, 
he told Packenham that while Calhoun had claimed 
the entire region drained by the Columbia River 
and its branches, the United States really owned 
the territory "north of the river up to the parallel 
54 ° 40 ', and was embarrassed by the position al- 
ready taken ; he now reaffirmed it only for the sake 
of consistency. As soon as the British minister de- 
clined to consider the demand, it was withdrawn and 
the assertion of ownership to the whole territory put 
forward ; and when Congress convened on Decem- 
ber 2, 1845, it received Polk's announcement that 
claim had been made to " all Oregon." The an- 



284 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

nouucement caused wide-spread consternation, for it 
revealed a truly alarming situation, which, if it were 
logically pursued, must lead to war. The hope of 
extricating the country from the position in which 
the President had put it lay with the Senate, and 
Calhoun stepped to the front with a resolution de- 
claring that the contradictory claims to the territory 
ought to be settled by treaty. His object was to 
bring about prolonged negotiations and profitable 
delays. Pie announced that his policy was one of 
"wise and masterful inactivity." The Northern 
Whigs and the South ranged behind him and accepted 
his leadership. Not since the days before he was a 
nullitier had he enjoyed so high a national position. 
He realized the utter folly of the Democratic policy 
and that persistence in it meant certain ruin. A 
rupture with England signified that the disputed 
territory would surely fall into her hands, because 
she had at the time a victorious army in China 
which could be thrown into Oregon in a few weeks, 
whereas an American army would have the well- 
nigh impossible task of crossing the American 
desert. It took six months to accomplish this, and 
it was almost beyond belief that an army could 
effectually survive the hardships. But there was 
another phase to the question. When the country 
was at war, state lines were flimsy barriers to the 
growth of national feeliug. Calhoun had no notion of 
again awakening the spirit he had so enthusiastic- 
ally aroused in 1812. He knew also that if Eng- 
land conquered, as she probably would, slavery 



PEACE AND WAR 285 

•would be doomed, for her predominance on the 
continent would give her power to carry out her 
abolition plans. That his course deserved the 
praise which sober men in both parties lavished 
upon it, is true, but his motives were only partly 
those of a national statesman. 

It may be doubted, however, whether the preva- 
lent fear of war was well-founded, and certainly it 
was exaggerated. Polk asked for no additional 
land or naval forces and all military activity was 
being concentrated in the Southwest against Mexico. 
The relations between England and the United 
States did not wear the signs which usually precede 
war. Notwithstanding the loud talking, there was 
little real heat, and men did not feel deeply stirred 
over the destinies of a few settlements in a region 
which was so remote that they hardly realized its 
existence and were incredulous of its importance. 
" Fifty-four forty or fight " had served its chief pur- 
pose when the campaign was over. 

Accordingly, when the British minister pressed 
his offer to make a convention with the forty-ninth 
parallel as the boundary, the people were prepared to 
accept it, and the administration was glad to trans- 
fer to the Senate the business of extricating the 
country from the false position in which it had 
been placed. In sending the draft of the convention 
to the Senate and asking its advice, Polk followed a 
course which was not without precedent, but was 
unusual. Before the functions of the Senate had be- 
come settled, General Washington had personally 



286 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

attended a session in order to obtain its views on the 
subject of a pending treaty. He was disgusted with 
the result and declared roundly that he would 
never enter the chamber for such a purpose 
again. After that, the Senate had been consulted 
only with reference to the ratification of completed 
treaties. While Polk's course was permissible, it 
was impolitic and unwise, although the outcome 
was fortunate. Great Britain managed her case 
with deliberation and in secret council ; the United 
States debated its side before packed galleries and 
in the full hearing of its adversary. On March 16, 
1846, Calhoun made his great speech. The Senate 
galleries were crowded with his admirers, many of 
whom had come as early as eight o'clock in the 
morning to get seats, and hundreds were turned 
away. The key-note of his address was that there 
must be compromise or there would be war, and 
that it would be inexcusable if we resorted to arms 
to obtain territory which we had formerly not 
claimed as ours. The administration's attitude was 
untenable and must change because conditions had 
changed. War with England meant war with 
Mexico. 

The peace party was in a majority in the Senate 
and its leader controlled the situation. In the be- 
ginning it had been in danger of complication by 
the introduction on January 14, 1846, of a resolu- 
tion announcing it as the opinion of this government 
that any effort on the part of European powers " to 
intermeddle in the social organization or political 



PEACE AND WAE 287 

arrangements of the independent nations of America, 
or further to extend the European system of govern- 
ment upon this continent by the establishment of 
new colonies would be . . . dangerous to the 
liberties of America, and therefore would in- 
cur . . . the prompt resistance of the Uuited 
States." Calhoun opposed this as a dangerous and 
inopportune pronouncement. He wanted to know 
if the United States was prepared to take up the 
guardianship of the whole family of American 
states and protect them from all foreign aggression. 
If so, then we must prepare to defend that 
guardianship. He said that the announcement of 
Monroe, although as a young and inexperienced 
man he had agreed to it, had not been approved by 
some wise-heads. No practical benefit had re- 
sulted, as it had been followed by no action on the 
part of our government. It was plain, however, 
that his main objection to the resolution was that 
it interfered with the settlement of the Oregon 
question. 

As soon as the Senate advised him to do so, the 
President signed the treaty accepting the forty- ninth 
degree of latitude as the northwestern boundary and 
the Oregon dispute was ended. The result was ex- 
tremely fortunate. Five days after the instructions 
of the British government to its minister in Wash- 
ington to sign the treaty left London, news was re- 
ceived in that city that hostilities between the United 
States and Mexico had begun, and had this been 
known before the instructions were written, they 



288 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

would doubtless have been less favorable to the 
United States. 

While Calhoun had beeu able to accomplish his 
purpose so far as Oregon was concerned, he was 
overwhelmed by the course of events in Mexico 
and powerless to stop the fatal progress of his party. 
The precipitating conflict of May, 1846, he insisted, 
was not war, but merely a collision between troops 
on the frontier ; and when the declaration of hos- 
tilities was rushed before the Senate, he would not 
vote for it. If there could have been even a little 
time for deliberation ; if he had been allowed to 
deliver but one speech, he firmly believed that he 
could have carried the Senate with him and de- 
feated the declaration ; but he could not make him- 
self heard and war was a fact in spite of his efforts. 
He seemed to foresee what would happen — that the 
war would eventuate in a vast addition to the na- 
tional domain and that it would not be Southern or 
slave territory, but would go to strengthen the hands 
of the North. He was keenly alive to the fact that 
the South had rushed away with a false idea and 
had wedded itself to it, and that in opposing the 
war, his popularity, now greater than it had ever 
been, would suffer ; but he believed the displeasure 
would be passing. He manifested in this crisis of 
his political career a degree of moral courage which 
commands admiration. He had but to nod his 
head and he would be his party's idol, but his con- 
victions were formed and he would not be false to 
them. Other public men who opposed the war, had 



PEACE AND WAR 289 

little to lose compared with his loss, for his party 
and his most devoted political friends — those who 
had stood behind him and unselfishly toiled for 
years to keep him at the front — were all, to a man, 
in favor of what they considered to be a Southern 
war. They thought it would result in incalculable 
benefit to the South and would put that section once 
more in control of the destinies of the nation. They 
wanted Calhoun to lead into the conflict, to control 
its progress and upon its termination to ride trium- 
phantly into the presidency. Dixon Lewis wrote to 
Cralle, on May 11, 1848, that if he had only stood 
with his party, this would have happened. ' ' Then, ' ' 
said he, "all the politicians in the country could 
not have kept him from being President. I was 
provoked, I confess, to see him throw the game 
away — I told him I wished he had a little more of 
that ' masterly inactivity ' which would keep him 
from risking himself and his friends on occasions 
when all he had to do was to keep out of the traps 
and ambuscades set for him by his enemies. He re- 
minds me of a great general, who wins great battles 
and then throws his life away in a street fracas. 
By his self-sacrificing course particularly over the 
Mexican War he has lost the presidency, and he 
has put himself in a position where not a friend he 
had out of Carolina could sustain him and live. 11 

This falling away vexed Calhoun. "He himself 
has been so little accustomed to see his friends think 
and act independent of him," said Lewis, "that he 
has not taken it well." 



CHAPTEE XIX 

THE INSPIRED LEADER 

On June 2G, 1846, Calhoun presented to the Senate 
the memorial and report adopted by the Memphis 
Convention. He had drawn it up himself and it is 
interesting as showing his matured views on the 
subject of internal improvements by the general 
government. In his earlier career he had favored 
such improvements on the broad ground of their 
usefulness, but now he had learned to test govern- 
mental questions by a different touchstone. It was 
the custom of many of the gentlemen of South 
Carolina to carry about with them pocket-editions 
of the Constitution, and some of them knew it by 
heart. Such close study of a written document 
produced as diverse results in political beliefs as 
close study of the Bible has produced in religious 
beliefs. Calhoun, for one, emerged from a study of 
the written Constitution of the United States, closer 
than any other statesman has ever made, with po- 
litical views which for their curious impracticability 
are only comparable to the religious conclusions 
reached by some of the closest students of biblical 
text. 

Deriving the power to make internal improve- 
ments from the clause of the Constitution which 
permits Congress to regulate commerce among the 



THE INSPIRED LEADER 291 

several states, he declared that the Mississippi 
River and its navigable tributaries, as they ran by- 
several states, coidd be improved by the general 
government to the extent of removiug obstructions 
and building ports for naval vessels ; but harbors 
for commerce must be built by the states. A river 
bordered by less than three states must be improved 
by the states bordering it. The Federal govern- 
ment could not build roads and canals. These 
views show how detrimental to efficient government 
a written constitution can be made, if only its 
language is construed strictly enough. 

But Congress did not long concern itself with the 
matter of internal improvements. Mightier prob- 
lems were soon before it and it was Calhoun who 
brought them forward. An enormous territory had 
been added to the national domain, and government 
must be established over it ; — should it be slave or 
free? It was the Missouri question of 1819 over 
again ; but whereas Calhoun had looked on at that 
contest, he must now perforce be in the thick of the 
fight. New territory, taken from Mexico by con- 
quest, he did not want, and he viewed the progress 
of the war with great alarm. He believed the ad- 
ministration contemplated taking the whole of Mex- 
ico, and if this were done, the Union would cer- 
tainly fall asunder. In January, 1848, he made a 
speech, which, in his opinion, checked the scheme, 
and when the treaty of peace came before the Senate 
on February 28th, he welcomed it as a fortunate 
deliverance. 



292 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

It had by this time become apparent that a North- 
ern wing of Calhoun's party was impossible. Pub- 
lic opinion in the North had become convinced that 
slavery was a sin. The press proclaimed this view, 
and it was being taught from the pulpit and in the 
schools and colleges. The anti-slavery sentiment 
was progressing steadily and independently of the 
propaganda of Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd 
Garrison, which was not as effective as the more 
temperate arguments of less fanatical men. Gar- 
rison and Phillips had few followers, and intelli- 
gent people everywhere deprecated their methods. 
Southerners knew that the South was steadily losing 
ground — that its credit and moral force were de- 
clining, that emigration was passing it by, and, 
worst of all, that the slaves themselves were begin- 
ning to understand that society was being stirred to 
its depths on their account. Nevertheless, the South 
was not united against the North, and Calhoun's 
state was the only one that could be certainly 
counted on to antagonize all anti-slavery measures. 
Everywhere else Southern Whigs, who were numer- 
ous, clung to a union with Northern Whigs. Cal- 
houn's lieutenants, scattered all over the South, and 
busy for the slavery cause, complained that they 
encountered a general lethargy. Money was raised 
and committees of correspondence were formed by 
the Calhoun party, but the people would not be 
aroused. 

In 1845 Dr. Henry B. Bascom of Kentucky, pub- 
lished a pamphlet on Methodism and slavery, which 



THE INSPIRED LEADER 293 

had a large circulation, aud in it he said that slavery 
was generally admitted in the South to be an evil, 
and that every one would agree to any safe deliver- 
ance from it. Most Southerners acknowledged that 
this was the truth. In September, 1845, Calhoun 
himself said that up to the last ten years, nearly 
every one had defended the relations between the 
races in the South as a necessary evil, which they 
wished to be rid of as soon as possible. He rejoiced 
to be able to add that great progress had been made 
toward what he called sound principles. 

With sound principles went as an inevitable 
companion disunion principles, and Calhoun's fol- 
lowers were openly avowing them. As soon as they 
believed the Union was oppressing them, they 
wished to abolish it. They called themselves 
" Calhoun Democrats," and never lost the hope of 
nominating their leader for the presidency. 

When the " Wilmot Proviso,"— stipulating that 
there should be no slavery in the new territory 
about to be acquired from Mexico,— came before the 
Senate, Calhoun met it on February 19, 1847, with 
a set of resolutions, to the effect that Congress had 
no right to make any law which would discriminate 
between the states of the Union, nor to deprive any 
citizen of the right of emigrating with his property 
(meaning slaves) into any territory, nor to impose 
any conditions on a state before admitting it into 
the Union. In his speech supporting the resolu- 
tions, he showed that the free states already had one 
hundred and thirty-eight votes in the electoral col- 



294 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

lege and the slaveholding states but ninety ; that 
there was a majority from the free states in the 
House and that the Senate was evenly divided only 
until two senators from the free state of Iowa should 
take their seats. More free states would be formed 
from time to time, and eventually there would be 
twenty-eight of these states to oppose fourteen slave 
states. Could the free states be trusted to guard the 
rights of the slave states ? Unless the balance be- 
tween the sections was maintained, he foresaw that 
revolution and civil war would follow. The Con- 
stitution must be invoked to preserve the sover- 
eignty and equal rights of the states. 

Thomas H. Benton characterized Calhoun's reso- 
lutions as "a string of abstractions," and said he 
saw in them "many nullifications" ; but, even if 
they were not abstractions, and even if Congress had 
adopted them, they would have yielded no perma- 
nent benefits to the South, for a subsequent Congress 
would have repealed them. 

At the session of 1848, the question of establishing 
a territorial form of government for Oregon was 
brought up for the second time. There were no 
slaves in the territory, and Southern members ad- 
mitted that this kind of labor could not be intro- 
duced there, but the principle was at stake, and the 
House bill making Oregon free soil was fought bit- 
terly. 

Calhoun saw something to support his slavery 
views in almost every question coming before the 
Senate. He opposed the suggestion of the Presi- 



THE INSPIRED LEADER 295 

dent, made in a special message, April 20, 1S48, 
that the United States should occupy the Isthmus of 
Yucatau, a province of Mexico, in which the In- 
dians had revolted and were killing the whites. 
The President asserted that our occupation was re- 
quired by the Monroe Doctrine, because, if we did 
not come to the rescue of the white people, England 
would, and she would obtain dominion and sover- 
eignty over Yucatan. To this interpretation of the 
Doctrine Calhoun demurred, saying it was far be- 
yond anything intended by Monroe. Even if Great 
Britain did occupy Yucatan, it would prove a worth- 
less possession. The people, when they threw off 
the Spanish yoke, had raised the aborigines to a 
level with themselves by freeing them from the sub- 
jection in which they had been held, and now were 
reaping the consequences. Similar consequences 
would follow in more civilized countries as the fruit 
of misguided philanthropy. 

On June 27, 1848, Calhoun made a speech on the 
Oregon bill, in which he announced the position 
from which he did not afterward depart. He had, 
he said, believed from the beginning that this was 
the only question strong enough to dissolve the 
Union, and that, if it was permitted to go beyond a 
certain point, which it was rapidly approaching, its 
settlement would be impossible. On August 19th, 
he spoke again, extolling slavery. It had, he said, 
like the waters of the Nile, spread a fertilizing in- 
fluence over all the world. He solemnly declared 
that the question at issue could never be settled un- 



296 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

til the South took it into its own hands, and if the 
great struggle should come, the North would suffer 
more than the South. His mind and all his energies 
had been devoted to upholding the Union, and he 
appealed to the Senate not to destroy it by passing 
a bill which would render it impossible for the 
Union to continue. Two days later (August 12th), 
when the House insisted upon doing so, he said 
mournfully : "The great strife between the North 
and South is ended. The North is determined to 
exclude the property of the slaveholder, and of 
course the slaveholder himself, from its territory." 
He saw no division of sentiment on the subject in 
the North, but he added sorrowfully that there was 
division in the South. The separation of the two 
sections was now completed, and it was for the 
South to show that, dearly as she loved the Union, 
there were questions of greater importance. 

The House bill passed the Senate by four votes, 
and Calhoun insisted that the responsibility for 
bringing matters to a crisis rested upon the North. 
If it embraced Abolition, it knew that disunion 
must follow. 

When Congress came together in December, 1848, 
it listened to Polk's long message, in which he con- 
gratulated the country on its happy condition, and 
then resumed the debate which showed that its con- 
dition was most unhappy. On January 9th, Berrien 
reported the bill for the admission of California to 
the Union, and on February 5th, Hunter presented 
the resolutions of the legislature of Virginia, recit- 



THE INSPIRED LEADER 297 

ing that the govern men t bad no control whatever 
over slavery, that it had no right to prevent its 
introduction into the territories, that any law to 
abolish slavery or the slave-trade in the District 
of Columbia would be an attack upon the institu- 
tions of the Southern states, and that the adoption 
of the Wilmot Proviso would require united resist- 
ance on the part of the South. 

Did the Constitution extend over the territories ? 
If it did, then slave property in the territories was 
protected. On February 24th, Calhoun spoke, con- 
tending that the Constitution went wherever United 
States authority went, and that Congress, a creature 
of the Constitution, had no power beyond the reach 
of the Constitution. The debate produced nothing 
conclusive and the session, being short, ended with 
no material change in the position of the opposing 
forces. 

Calhoun now renewed with vigor his efforts to 
bring the South to a realization of the impending 
crisis. There should be a convention of Southern 
states, he thought, so that a united front could be 
presented, and the North be convinced that its 
policy must change or the South would withdraw 
from the Union. The partnership had become de- 
structive of the safety of the South, the main pur- 
pose for which it had been formed. In April, 1849, 
he wrote that the time was near at hand when his 
people must choose between disunion and sub- 
mission. 

When in the autumn of 1849 Mississippi issued 



298 JOHN 0. CALHOUN 

an "Address to the Southern States," calling for a 
convention at Nashville in June, 1850, he urged 
them all to send delegates, for he was convinced 
that the time for action had come. 

In December, 1849, Calhoun attended his last 
Congress, one of the most notable sessions ever 
held. Henry Clay, now an old man of seventy- 
two years, had returned to the Senate, after several 
years' absence, to go through the last scenes of his 
political career. He bad appeared on the public 
stage a few years before Calhoun, but he had first 
caught his audience when he and Calhoun stood 
side by side for the same cause in the House of 
representatives in 1811. Fears of the destiny of 
their country and doubts verging on despair had 
taken the place of the enthusiasm and bounding 
hopes of their younger days. They were now as 
far asunder as the poles, but they were agreed on 
one point — they would do all they could to preserve 
the Union. Daniel Webster was there, also serving 
for the last time. He had matured later than either 
of them, but his splendid powers had grown and 
mellowed, and, untrammeled by the fatal surround- 
ings which made Calhoun the advocate of a doomed 
cause and Clay the maker of compromises which 
could not endure, he was laying down the only 
interpretation of the Constitution upon which a 
great nation could be built. The great triumvirate 
dominated the occasion and held public attention 
for the last time, and passed off the stage, fast fol- 
lowing one another. Calhoun went first, and a few 



THE INSPIEED LEADEE 299 

months later Clay left, having carried his coin- 
promise measures. His public career was closed 
and he died two years after Calhoun. Webster 
retired from the Senate to the State Department be- 
fore the compromises were passed. He was born 
in the same year as Calhoun and died a few months 
after Clay. With the disappearance of these great 
men, closed the most brilliant chapter in the history 
of the Senate. 

On January 29, 1850, Clay offered his com- 
promises to secure ' ' the peace, concord and har- 
mony of the Union." California was to be ad- 
mitted as a free state ; territorial governments in 
the territory acquired from Mexico were to be 
organized without restriction as to slavery ; the 
disputed boundary between Texas and Mexico was 
determined ; the public debt of Texas was provided 
for ; slavery in the District of Columbia was not to 
be abolished without the consent of Maryland and 
the people of the District ; the slave-trade in the 
District should cease ; there should be stricter laws 
concerning the surrender of fugitive slaves ; there 
should be no restriction of the slave-trade between 
the states. These measures were adopted in sub- 
stance one by one after Calhoun died. He was 
unalterably opposed to admitting California as free 
and to touching the question of slavery in the 
District. He favored the fugitive slave and slave- 
trade propositions and the establishing of territories 
without restriction of slavery, but he was not pre- 
pared to follow Clay's lead. He made one speech 



300 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

—his last— and his plans were shattered when they 
were of greater importance to the South than they 
had ever been before. Armed and ready for battle, 
confident that he had right on his side, believing 
that he and he alone could win the fight for the 
South, he fell, conscious that disaster would over- 
take his people because of his untimely taking-off. 

Toward the end of January and before Clay's 
compromises were introduced, Calhoun became 
ill with pneumonia. His lodgings were at Hill's 
boarding-house on Capitol Hill, in the row of houses 
between A and East Capital Streets and only a short 
walk from the Capitol. On February 18th he had re- 
covered sufficiently to go to the Senate chamber, but 
the next day the weather was bad and he kept his 
room, having a return of cold and fever. In the en- 
suing days his condition improved, but he still had an 
obstinate cough and was very weak. His one de- 
sire was to be back in the Senate, and on March 4th 
he was there, carrying with him the speech which 
was to be the final effort of his life. He was warned 
by his friends that he was too ill to deliver the 
address himself, so he gave it to James M. Masou, 
a senator from Virginia, to read. Mason had a 
fine delivery and pronounced it with dramatic 
effect, and as his voice rang through the Senate 
chamber, Calhoun sat silent beside him, his rugged 
countenance motionless as if it had been chiseled 
in stone. 

It is not too much to say that this was the most 
important speech made by a Southern leader before 



THE INSPIRED LEADER 301 

the Civil War, aud that no other public utterance 
did more to crystallize popular sentiment. It raised 
the curtain and revealed the true drama that was 
acting, and it foretold the future with dreadful 
prescience. 

Calhoun began by reminding the senators that he 
had already warned them that agitation of the slavery 
question must end in disunion. The gravest of all 
problems now confronted the government — how 
could the Union be preserved? It was idle, he 
proceeded, to deny that the South was in a state of 
dangerous discontent, arising from the attitude of 
the North toward slavery, and the fact that the 
equilibrium of power between the sections had 
been destroyed, thus placing one section at the 
mercy of the other. A system of taxation had been 
adopted, which placed the greater part of the 
burden upon the South, and measures had been 
passed changing the character of the government. 
These began even before the Constitution went into 
effect, when the Ordinance of 1787, for governing 
the territory northwest of the river Ohio had been 
adopted by the old Congress, excluding slavery 
from the entire region. This had been followed by 
the Missouri Compromise, excluding it from the 
territory acquired from France above a certain 
line ; then had come the act keeping it out of 
Oregon ; so that now there were 1,238,025 square 
miles of free territory, and slavery had at most but 
609,503 square miles. 

If the territory acquired by treaty from Mexico 



302 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

was to be free, the South would have but a fourth 
part of the land acquired by the United States since 
the Declaration of Independence. The general 
government had reached the point where it asserted 
the right to judge of its own powers and execute 
them by force. We were no longer a Federal 
republic, but had become a consolidated democracy. 
The South was, consequently, at the mercy of the 
North, which regarded slavery as a sin and a crime. 
The Abolition agitation started in 1835, when peti- 
tions to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia 
began to come before Congress, and thereafter 
extended its influence throughout the country. 
What was a small fanatical party had been courted 
by the other parties for the votes it controlled and 
its power had spread rapidly. The South was 
now, therefore, obliged to choose between Abolition 
and Secession. Already many of the cords binding 
the Union were broken. The great religious 
denominations had generally, except in the case of 
the Catholic Church, local and national governments 
like those of the state and Federal governments ; 
but the powerful Methodist Church had split into 
hostile factions — one North, the other South. So 
had the Baptists, and the Presbyterians were about 
to follow. The two great political parties, which 
had originally extended over the whole country and 
bound it together, were now become sectional. 
Soon there would be no bond of union except 
force, and this was not union but subj ligation. 
The Union could be saved only by satisfying the 



THE INSPIRED LEADEE 303 

South that it could remain in it with safety and 
honor. It could not be saved by crying, " Union, 
Union, the glorious Union!" any more than a 
patient dangerously ill could be made well by cry- 
ing, "Health, health, glorious health!" The cry 
usually came from those who were working to 
destroy the Constitution and consequently the 
Union— from those who were rendering nugatory 
the constitutional requirement concerning the sur- 
render of fugitive slaves, and advocating the aboli- 
tion of slavery, although the Constitution safe- 
guarded it to the states. The Union was a means 
to an end. 

How could it be saved ? By observing justice to- 
ward the South and conforming to the Constitution. 
Concede to her an equal right in the newly- 
acquired territory, observe carefully the law relative 
to fugitive slaves, cease agitating the slave ques- 
tion, and agree to an amendment to the Constitution 
restoring the equilibrium between the sections. If 
the North was not prepared to settle the questions 
at issue on this basis, let her say so, and let the 
states part in peace ; let her say so and the South 
would know what to do. He closed by declaring that 
he had done his best to arrest the agitation of the 
slavery question and save the Union ; but if that 
could not be done, his efforts would be directed to 
saving the South, where he lived and upon whose 
side were justice and the Constitution. 

The leader of a doomed cause, upon whom the 
hand of death had already been laid, listened to his 



304 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

own words, which foretold the destruction of all 
that he held most sacred. The measures against 
which he most bitterly inveighed were the achieve- 
ments of Southern meu. The clause of the Or- 
dinance of 1787 for the government of the terri- 
tory northwest of the river Ohio, which made that 
vast domain forever a freeman's country, was 
written by William Grayson of Virginia, and voted 
for by every Southern member of the Congress. The 
Compromise of 1820, which was the next step 
toward the undoing of the South, according to Cal- 
houn, was the creation of another Southerner and 
was carried by Southern votes. Not even now, 
after all of his great efforts, could Calhoun claim 
to have a united Southern people at his back. 
There was Foote, of Mississippi, protesting against 
his course ; Houston, of the new state of Texas, a 
Virginian by birth, drawing bursts of applause 
from the galleries by his fervid promises to stand 
by the Union ; and Benton of Missouri, bom in 
North Carolina, and Bell of Tennessee, opposing 
him manfully. All of these and others represented 
constituencies firmly set against all that he stood 
for. None of them, it must be understood, agreed 
with the Northern Abolitionists, whose efforts made 
peaceable or gradual lawful emancipation impos- 
sible ; and no Southern man, however much he 
abhorred Calhoun's party, favored the sudden and 
general freeing of the blacks on Southern soil. 
Considerations for their safety and the future of 
their section, as well as their own self-interest, 



THE INSPIRED LEADER 305 

compelled them to oppose such an idea. Neverthe- 
less, Calhoun heard that Louisiana was almost a 
free-soil state. The population was composed of 
mixed elements, and among the strong Union 
leaders were several anti-nullifiers, who had left 
South Carolina in 1834 when Calhoun had tri- 
umphed there. The President, a Louisiana man 
and a slaveholder, was against him. One of Cal- 
houn's correspondents in Alabama said that if the 
question of submitting to the North or breaking up 
the Union were put to the people, they would prefer 
Union and submission. From Virginia he heard 
that a large portion of the state was willing to ac- 
cept the Wilmot Proviso. From Georgia, Herschel 
V. Johnson, afterward governor, senator and candi- 
date for the vice-presidency, wrote on July 20, 1849, 
that the people of the South were not thoroughly 
nerved to united resistance. 

Some of Calhoun's followers were becoming 
frantic. J. H. Hammond, who went to the Senate 
in 1857, wrote that he would like to "kick them 
[the Northern members of Congress] out of the 
Capitol and set it on fire," and he spoke disdain- 
fully of ' ' that Union for which the South and West 
have had such a bigoted and superstitious venera- 
tion." He was ready for anything, and said Cal- 
houn must write the Constitution of the new South- 
ern confederacy. A united South would, his fol- 
lowers declared, nominate him for the presidency ; 
but they were working to prevent the Union from 
holding together until another presidential election. 



30G JOHN C. CALHOUN 

A correspondent wrote from Alabama, on April 
29, 1849 : " Tlie public mind is rapidly being pre- 
pared for what must come at last — the dissolution 
of the Union, but we must have time.'''' All his cor- 
respondents reported the want of appreciation of the 
crisis in the South, but some discussed the question 
of raising troops, and one proposed that a plan be 
perfected for having the slaves sack Northern cities. 
Those who lost their heads so completely must have 
been conscious of impending defeat. They knew 
that the free-soil sentiment at the North was spread- 
ing steadily, and that the Northern view of slavery 
was being disseminated all over the world. South- 
ern men in Europe found that all foreigners were 
looking at slavery with Northern eyes. 

The great nullifier was fighting with the energy 
of a hundred men, and in South Carolina his con- 
trol was so complete, that newspaper editors wrote 
to him to learn what opinions they should express. 
He had become the slavery cause incarnate, and the 
few Northern men who sympathized with that cause 
asked him, like his devoted children, what they 
should think, while Southerners waited for his 
words. For example, Reuben Chapman, Governor 
of Alabama, wrote to him on October 16, 1849, ask- 
ing what he should say in his annual message on 
the subject of slavery and the territories. 

Shortly before the Taylor administration began, 
the Southern members of the Senate and the House 
met constantly to devise measures to arouse theSouth. 
Finally they adopted an address to the people of 



THE INSPIKED LEADEE 307 

their section which Calhoun had prepared, modeled 
upon the Declaration of Independence and deemed 
by its author a document of not less importance. 
Only one senator from Missouri, one from Louisiana, 
and one from Alabama, signed it. There were none 
from Maryland, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, 
Kentucky, and Texas. The names of only twenty- 
six representatives were among the signers, whereas 
the Southern representation in the lower house 
numbered eighty -nine. But a moiety, therefore, of 
the Southerners in Congress accepted the document, 
and to obtain even this slender support, Calhoun 
had been obliged to soften some of the expressions 
in his original draft. Nevertheless, the manifesto 
was important and marked a point onward in the 
march of secession which Calhoun was leading. It 
put before the South the extent of the encroachments 
upon its rights and set forth its grievances, then 
dipped into the future. To free the slaves in the 
South, it said, would cause untold misery and could 
be effected only by the prostration of the white 
population. Hostile feelings between the North 
and South would follow, and the negroes would side 
with the North. They would confer favors on each 
other, and, impelled by fanaticism and love of 
power, the North would raise the blacks to "a 
political and social equality with their former own- 
ers, by giving them the right of voting and holding 
public offices under the Federal government. But 
when once raised to an equality, they would become 
the fast political associates of the North, acting and 



308 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

voting with it on all questions, and by this political 
union holding the white race at the South in com- 
plete subjection. The blacks, and the profligate 
whites that might unite with them, would become 
the principal recipients of Federal offices and patron- 
age, and would, in consequence, be raised above the 
whites of the South in the political and social scale." 
There would be a change of conditions, and the 
white people would flee from the South, leaving the 
negroes in control. 



CHAPTER XX 

THE DEAD SENATOR 

On March 7th, when Webster made his famous 
speech intended to conciliate the slave power, Cal- 
houn was in his seat and replied briefly. To Web- 
ster's impassioned declaration that the Union could 
not be dissolved, his answer was that it could — that 
great moral causes would destroy it, if they were 
not checked. He did not speak again till the 13th, 
when he said that he and General Cass stood for 
two totally different methods of saving the Union. 
Cass proposed palliatives that would accomplish 
nothing, for the South would never be safe while the 
North held possession of preponderating power which 
it could use in any manner it x^leased. Calhoun in- 
sisted that new guarantees must be given, with a 
constitutional amendment to make them binding. 

He did not state the nature of the constitutional 
amendment which he would offer or accept. It is 
probable that he put forward the idea now and in 
his great speech a few days before in the hope that it 
would be favorably received, when it could be given 
such a shape as would make it acceptable to both 
of the sections. This was the method that he al- 
wavs followed, and it was not his habit to offer rad- 
ical propositions when their success was hopeless. 



310 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

It is altogether improbable that be intended to in- 
troduce an amendment looking to the creation of a 
dual executive, and historians, who have concluded 
that such was his purpose, are mistaken. This idea 
had recently occurred to him, but it had not become 
fixed and he had not elaborated it into a definite 
proposition. To consider it we must turn back for 
a moment to his Discourse on the Constitution and 
Government of the United States, which, as a matured 
document, we have already treated. ' The concluding 
pages had been written after the Mexican War and 
just before their author went to Washington for the 
last time. Here he dealt with the questions before the 
Senate in the same way as in his speeches. Some 
of the evils, the Discourse said, which had been 
practiced since the Constitution went into effect, had 
become so fixed that they could not be overcome ex- 
cept by amendment of the Constitution. The equi- 
librium between the sections had been permanently 
destroyed and the Uuion was in danger. It was 
necessary, therefore, that there be an organic change 
to assure to the weaker section protection from the 
stronger. " It might be doue," said the Discourse, 
"in various ways. Among others, it might be ef- 
fected through a reorganization of the executive 
department, so that its powers, instead of being 
vested, as they now are, in a single officer, should 
be vested in two ; — to be so elected as that the two 
should be constituted the special organs and repre- 
sentatives of the respective sections in the executive 

'See ante, -p. 94. 



THE DEAD SENATOR 311 

department of the government ; and requiring each 
to approve all the acts of Congress before they shall 
become laws. One might be charged with the ad- 
ministration of matters connected with the foreign 
relations of the country ; and the other, of such as 
were connected with its domestic institutions ; the 
selection to be decided by lot." 

These thoughts he did not communicate to auy 
one nor inculcate in any of his disciples, and there 
is no indication of an intention on his part to offer 
them in the field of practical legislation. 

His remarks on March 7th were his last in the 
Senate, and he spoke them in evident pain, his 
voice broken and hoarse and his frame sinking with 
fatal disease. He was a dying man, and his mind 
was making the final effort to conquer the invader 
of his body. The next day Cass saw him at his 
boarding-house and he expected to be in his seat to 
resume the debate ; but in the ensuing days, while 
discussion raged, he lay dying in his lodgings across 
the park, which separated them from the Capitol. 
While his body was rapidly sinking, his mind con- 
tinued in full vigor, and his associates visited him 
and took counsel with him. He busied himself 
with his papers, and clung desperately to every- 
thing that connected him with the burning public 
questions, which he believed he alone could settle. 
The conviction was upon him that the South and the 
Union could be saved by him only. 

While the question of the compromise was under 
consideration, and Bell of Tennessee, Clay of Ken- 



312 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

tucky, and Foote of Alabama were struggling to de- 
vise a scheme which both sides could accept to pal- 
liate existing evils, the Senate received word that 
the leader who opposed them had dropped out of 
the fight. 

This ending was not unexpected by his friends, 
who had, in fact, believed that he would not be able 
to come back to this session of Congress at all. Dur- 
ing the previous session, he had fainted three times 
in the lobby of the Senate, and on one of these occa- 
sions, E. Barnwell Ehett, hastening to him from the 
House, found him lying exhausted upon a sofa in the 
Vice-President's room, with his coat and waistcoat 
oft'. As he took his hand, Calhoun said mournfully, 
"Ah, Mr. Ehett, my career is nearly done. The 
great battle must be fought by you younger men." 

" I hope not, sir," replied Ehett, " for never was 
your life more precious, or your counsels more 
needed for the guidance and salvation of the South." 

"There, indeed," said Calhoun, his tears gather- 
ing, "is my only regret at going. The South! 
The poor South !" 

Ehett urged him to put on his coat. 

"I cannot," he said, " I am burning up. Wait 
till I am cool." l 

Mr. Ehett was right in saying the South, or more 
correctly the cause of slavery, could ill afford to 
lose him. There was none competent to take his 
place, and the younger men to whom he looked to 
fight the great battle, were mere pygmies by com- 

J See Rhett's Eulogy in The Carolina Tribute to Calhoun,-p. 270. 



THE DEAD SENATOB 313 

parison with this giant, who, burning up with fever, 
fought so manfully for his cause even when he was 
at the portals of death. 

A few days before he died, he dictated to his 
private secretary, Joseph A. Scoville, certain reso- 
lutions which he contemplated introducing in the 
Senate as the ultimatum of the South. They recited 
that the Southern states could not lawfully be de- 
prived of equal rights in the territory acquired from 
Mexico or from any other source ; that the people 
of a territory had no right to form a constitution 
and a state without the permission of Congress, and 
that the action of California was consequently void ; 
that Congress had no right to give validity to Cali- 
fornia's constitution ; that the Wilniot Proviso was 
an attempt to deprive the South of its rights by a 
palpably unconstitutional method ; and that the 
time had arrived when the Southern states owed it 
to themselves and the other states in the Union to 
settle forever the questions at issue between them. 
There was nothing new in these resolutions. They 
merely put in concrete form what Calhoun had said 
over and over again. 

After this deliverance had been taken down, he 
expressed a wish for "one hour more to speak in 
the Senate," adding, U I can do more than on any 
past occasion in my life." 

The resolutions which he had just dictated were 
in his mind when he uttered this wish. No new 
and hitherto unthought-of plan for saving the South 
had come to him. Some of his followers believed 



314 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

otherwise after his death, and others thought his 
words meant that he had at length determined to 
abandon the position he bad so long defended and 
speak out in favor of disunion as the remedy for 
evils which had become unendurable ; ' but he bad 
said nothing to indicate that he was on the verge of 
a discovery, and, moreover, subsequent investi- 
gators, who have gone over the whole field with a 
microscope, know that there was no remedy discov- 
erable. As for disunion, never, in spite of the fact 
that many of his followers ha<! always wisbed it, had 
he given any indication that he would favor it, 
while there existed even a shadow of hope of pre- 
venting it. If now, when he had but a few hours to 
live, he had come definitely to the conclusion that 
he must speak out in favor of disunion, he would 
have done so, for it would have required him to say 
but one word, and he had yet strength enough for 
that, 

During his last hours, his mind was not fixed on 
death, nor upon the awful problem which it would 
solve for him ; but upon the political problem with 
which his country was vainly struggling. It was a 
senator rather than a man who was dying. Ever 
since his fatal illness had begun, he had resolutely 
forbidden that his wife should be sent for, or told of 
his condition, not wishing that sbe should be put to 
inconvenience. His son, John B. Calhoun, a phy- 
sician, was the only member of his family who was 
with him. 

1 See Rhett's Oration. 



THE DEAD SENATOK 315 

His faithful friend, Cralle, came to hiin and 
watched by his bed the night he died. Death ap- 
proached gradually, and, as it had been expected 
for some time, he was almost abandoned in his last 
hours. Cralle was struck with the absence of airy 
signs of feminine attention in the sick chamber. 
On the narrow mantelpiece was a lump of cold 
boiled rice, a glass of water, some dried prunes and 
a feeble tallow candle. As the night wore on, the 
noise of merrymaking in other parts of the house 
sometimes penetrated the sick-room, and occasion- 
ally some one would look in to ask if he still lived. 1 
At half-past twelve he said he felt that he was sink- 
ing, and in about an hour called his son to him, and 
holding out his arm remarked that the pulse was 
not discernible. He then directed that his watch 
and papers be put in his trunk and added that he 
felt no pain. A little later he said : "lam per- 
fectly comfortable." Shortly before six o'clock, he 
motioned to his son to come to his bedside, and tak- 
ing his hand, looked him intently in the eyes, but 
was unable to speak. He remained conscious for a 
little while longer, then closed his eyes, and was 
dead. It was half-past seven o'clock, Sunday morn- 
ing, March 31, 1850, and the cause of his death was 
asthenia, superinduced by the diseased condition of 
the lungs. 

On Tuesday, April 2d, his body was taken into 
the Senate chamber, Clay, Webster, Mangum, Cass, 
King and Berrien acting as pallbearers, and state 

1 Cralle MSS. 



316 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

funeral ceremonies were held, after which there was 
a procession to the Congressional Buryiug-Ground, 
where the body was put in a receiving vault. 

On Monday morning, April 22d, it was brought 
to the east front of the Capitol and received by a 
committee of twenty-five prominent citizens of 
South Carolina, who had been sent to accompany 
it back to the state. A second funeral procession 
carried it to the wharf on the Potomac, where it was 
put on a boat and carried down the river to Acquia 
Creek, being met there by a special train and deputa- 
tions from Fredericksburg and Eichmond. In these 
and all other cities along the route to Wilming- 
ton, N. C, there were solemn observances in honor 
of the dead senator. At that place, the steamer Nina 
and an escorting steamer were met, and the body 
was carried on to Charleston by sea, arriving off 
the Battery at nine o'clock Thursday morning, 
April 25th, and being landed at noon. The coming 
was expected, and elaborate preparations of recep- 
tion had been made, but there was no crowd at the 
wharf, and the long funeral procession passed 
through streets silent and apparently deserted. All 
the houses were draped in mourning and their 
shutters were closed. In front of the citadel, 
where a great throng had gathered, Senator Mason, 
of Virginia, — he who had read Calhoun's last 
speech, — in behalf of Congress, formally transferred 
the body to the governor of South Carolina. It 
was then taken to the City Hall, where it lay> in 
state, and the next day, April 26th, was carried to 



THE DEAD SENATOR 317 

St. Philip's Church, whence, after funeral services, 
it was put in a tomb in the Western Cemetery of 
the church. In the annals of the city of Charleston, 
there is no event of greater note than the extraor- 
dinary funeral of Calhoun. 

-Unusual homage was also paid to him throughout 
the Union. Most people in the North differed with 
him, but all respected and admired him for his 
boldness, his honesty and his great talents, and 
they felt it a credit to the country that it had pro- 
duced such a man. But with most Southerners the 
homage was evidence of devotion to what he stood 
for and of grief at the loss of the leader of their 
cause ; and in South Carolina the sorrow was as 
deep as any people ever felt for the untimely death 
of their chosen king. He was, in fact, their un- 
crowned king. ,/ 

The lesson of his life was taught from their 
pulpits and platforms, and these addresses show 
how the same conflict which had raged in him 
raged in the breasts of his constituents. When 
Senator Mason delivered the body to Governor Sea- 
brook, he said : " It is no disparagement to your 
state or her people, to say their loss is irreparable, 
for Calhoun was a man of a century ; but to the 
entire South, the absence of his counsels can 
scarcely be supplied." The orator was thinking 
of Calhoun simply as a Southerner. 

Rev. James W. Miles, who preached the sermon 
over his bier in St. Philip's Church, warned the 
people that a crisis was upon them. "Wait not, 



318 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

then," he said, "for that compulsory union in an 
issue for your last hope of justice and equality ; but 
here, around the coffin of that heroic dust, with 
the deep and solemn deliberation which the scene 
is calculated to inspire, vow in your inmost souls to 
bury all party rivalry and division, and to unite as 
fellow citizens and brothers in your reasonable and 
unflinching maintenance of a cause which involves 
nothing less than your self-respect and your equi- 
table participation in the rights of a Free Con- 
federacy." Rev. J. C. Coit, in a eulogy delivered 
at Cheravv, pointed out the probable coming of 
forcible disunion and showed that in the test 
several states would help South Carolina. Eev. 
B. M. Peters, at the Presbyterian Church at 
Columbia, said every one wanted to retain the 
Union, but that it must be a reality and not a 
sham ; and in this he closely followed Calhoun's 
idea. J. H. Hammond in his oration on Novem- 
ber 21st, laid away forever the doctrine of nullifica- 
tion, which had really died some years before. 
"It is not probable," he said, "that state inter- 
position will ever again be resorted to while this 
Union continues. More decisive measures will be 
preferred." 

Had Calhoun's life been a success or a failure? 
He had helped, in 1812, to form a people drifting 
toward unpatriotic, unworthy ideals into a nation 
of patriots ; he had brought the people of his own 
state, in 1828, to espouse a theory of government so 
impracticable and absurd that they and he occupy 



THE DEAD SENATOR 319 

the unique position of being the only ones who 
have ever advocated it ; but he had saved them 
from an attempt at disunion. He had emerged 
from this maze of reasoning, which he had mis- 
taken for a scheme of government, into the cham- 
pionship of slavery and state sovereignty, and he 
welded the two ideas inseparably together. If he 
had lived, he would have seen the destruction of 
both, and he would have seen the degradation of his 
state and of the South. If there ever was a states- 
man who judged the consequences of events cor- 
rectly, it was he. Without slavery there would 
have been no insistence upon state sovereignty ; 
without state sovereignty there would in the end 
have been no slavery ; general and sudden emanci- 
pation meant the destruction of the whole edifice 
of Southern society. There may have been a time 
in the history of the South when gradual emancipa- 
tion would have beeu possible ; but it was never 
possible unless it was supported by public opinion, 
and such support became absolutely out of the 
question as soon as any considerable number of men 
outside of the South organized a movement to ac- 
complish unconditional abolition. Such a move- 
ment was the waving of a torch in a powder- 
magazine and compelled every slaveholder and 
every dweller in the slave country to stand for the 
protection of his property and his life. What 
could Calhoun have done but support slavery and 
state sovereignty, the bulwark which supported it? 
Slavery was the foundation on which the civiliza- 



320 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

tiou of his people had been built, and he knew that 
if it was doomed, the South was doomed. His peo- 
ple rushed forward to their fate without him. If he 
had lived, he might have led them iuto a different 
path from that they followed ; but they would have 
reached the same end, for it was beyond the power 
of man to stay the hand of fate which fell so 
heavily upon them. Calhoun's cause failed and his 
life's effort failed, but more than any man in our 
history he was identified with that cause, and it was 
a central idea in which nearly half the American 
people believed until it was destroyed by the Civil 
War. Among American statesmen few have had 
so strong an influence upou their time as he. 
Never coming forward too soon, never miscalculat- 
ing the will of his constituency, he was able to 
guide that will and bring it to bear upon the nation 
with well-directed force. 

Keg-ret has often been expressed by students of 
Calhoun's career, who have come to admire his 
mental and moral characteristics, as all must 
who study it, that he should have changed from 
a nationalist to a sectionalist ; but this regret is 
short-sighted. If he had remained a nationalist, 
he would have been a Carolina planter with per- 
haps occasional service in the state legislature, and 
his fame would have been no greater than that of 
Petigru or B. F. Perry, for example. He played a 
great historical part in our national life because he 
was a sectionalist and would not have been known 
if he had remained a nationalist. 



THE DEAD SENATOR 321 

"Was he right or wrong? Most Southern men 
thought that he was right and he himself thought 
so in every fibre of his being. Nevertheless, his 
strong nature was wrung with contending emo- 
tions. He gloried in the Union ; he believed that 
upon its continuance depended the welfare and 
advancement of the human race ; he would have 
repelled with indignation the charge that he was 
not a true American. But if the South must die — 
his South, the only South he had ever known or 
could imagine — then his duty and his wish were to 
save it, and if necessary to sacrifice the Union in 
order to save it. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The chief manuscript sources of this book are the Cralle 
papers, kindly lent me by Mr. Cralle's grandson, J. Lawrence 
Campbell, Esq., of Bedford City, Va. ; a few letters which be- 
longed to the late Mrs. Francis J. Lippitt and are now in the 
Worcester, Mass., public library ; the Blair, Madison and 
Markoe papers in the Library of Congress, and the Archives 
(domestic letters, diplomatic notes and instructions) of the 
Department of State. 

The general authorities, besides the Annals and Delates of 
Congress, the Congressional Globe and the histories of the 
United States (especially with reference to the Oregon cmestion, 
von Hoist's Constitutional History of the United States, Vol. Ill) 
are: Works of John C. Calhoun (6 Vols.), Richard K. Cralle, 
editor, 1854 ; Correspondence of John C. Calhoun, J. Franklin 
Jameson, editor, in Vol. II of "The Annual Report of the 
American Historical Association for 1899 "; John C. Calhoun, 
by H. von Hoist, 1891 ; The Life of John C. Calhoun, by John 
J. Jenkins, 1850; Life of John C. Calhoun, by Gustavus M. 
Pinckney, 1903; The Writings of Jefferson (Ford) and Madison 
(Hunt), Putnam's editions; Letters and Times of the Tylers, by 
Lyon Gardiner Tyler, 1884 ; The Bench and Bar of South Caro- 
lina, by John Benton O'Neall, 1859; Life and Times of G. C. 
Memminger, by Henry D. Capers, 1893 ; Lives of Thomas U. 
Benton, by Roosevelt, 1887, Meigs, 1904, and Rogers (American 
Crisis Biographies), 1905; Seaton's Biography, 1871; James 
Lewis Petigru, by William J. Grayson, 1866 ; Life of Edward 
Livingston, by Charles H. Hunt, 1864 ; Life and Writings of 
Jared Sparks, by H. B. Adams, 1893 ; The Life and Times of 
William Lowndes, by Mrs. St. Julian Raveuel, 1901 ; Edward 
M. Shepard's Van Buren, 1892; Life of James Madison, by Gail- 



BIBLIOGEAPHY 323 

lard Hunt, 1902 ; Schurz's Henry Clay, 1888 ; McMaster's Dan- 
iel Webster, 1902; Parton's Andrew Jackson, 1860; Harriet 
Martineau'a Society in America and Retrospect of Western Travel, 
1837; The Olden Time of Carolina, by the Octogenarian Lady of 
Charleston, 1855 ; The First Forty Years of Washington Society, 
by Margaret Bayard Smith, Gaillard Hunt, editor, 190b" ; The 
Department of State ; its History and Functions, by Gaillard Hunt, 
1893 ; B. F. Perry's Biographical Sketches of Eminent American 
Statesmen, 1887, and Reminiscences of Public Men, 1889; TJie 
Carolina Tribute to Calhoun, J. P. Thomas, editor (containing 
Ehett's oration, eulogies and sketches), 1857; A History of the 
Calhoun Monument (containing L. Q. C. Lamar's oration), 1888; 
The Works of Henry Clay, Colton, 1896; John Quincy Adams's 
Memoirs, 1876 ; Life and Letters of George Cabot, by Henry Cabot 
Lodge, 1877; Thirty Years' View of the United States Senate, by 
Thomas Hart Benton. 1861 ; A Critical Study of Nullification, by 
David Franklin Houston (Harvard Historical Studies), 1896; 
The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, by Ethelbert Dudley Warfield, 
1894 ; Randell Hunt's Speeches, William Henry Hunt, editor, 
1896 ; History of South Carolina, by David Ramsay, 1809 ; Re- 
marks During a Journey Through North America, by Adam 
Hodgson, 1823 ; Kentucky, by N. S. Shaler, 1885 ; State Papers 
on Nullification, 1834; Messages and Palters of the Presidents, 
1896 ; Travels in North America, by Charles Augustus Murray, 
1839 ; The United Slates and Canada, by C. D. Arfwedsou, 1834. 

The law-books containing information are the Supreme Court 
Reports, Carson's The Supreme Court of the United States, Laws 
of South Carolina (Acts of the General Assembly) ; Statutes at 
Large of South Carolina, Thomas Cooper, editor, 1836; and 
m\Vs Reports (S. C). 

The newspapers are : The Southern Patriot and Commercial 
Advertiser, Charleston City Gazette, Charleston Mercury, Green- 
ville Mountaineer, and Columbia Telescope, the files of which are 
for the most part in the Congressional Library, except for a few 
missing periods which can be supplied by consulting the files of 
the Charleston Library Society at Charleston ; the New York 



324 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Evening Post, February 15, 1895, article by Shirley Carter 
Hughson, oh " The Code Noir " ; by the same author in the 
same paper April 15, 1895, articles on Hugh S. Legare's cor- 
respondence; the Sunday News, Charleston, February 4, 1906, 
article by Edward A. Trescot on "Old Pendleton." 

The principal magazines consulted are ; The Southern Re- 
view, Vol. II ; The American Historical Review, Vol. Ill ; The 
Political Science Quarterly, Vol. VI ; All the Year Round, Vol. 
IV ; Lippineott's Magazine, July, 1898 ; Harper's Magazine, 
Vol. IX ; Hunt's Merchant Magazine, Vols. VII and IX ; Be 
Bow's Review, Vol. VIII ; North American Review, Vol. VII, and 
Niles' Weekly Register. 

The principal pamphlets are: The Crisis, or Essays on the 
Usurpation of the Federal Government, by '"Brutus" (Robert J. 
Turnbull), 1827; Memorial of J. Johnston Pettigreiv, by William 
H. Trescot, 1870; The Life and Services of Joel R. Poinsett, by 
C. J. Still<§, 1888 ; The Life of John C Calhoun (autobiograph- 
ical), 1843; George MacDuffie's Essays on Consolidation, 1824, 
and A Defense of a Liberal Construction of the Powers of Congress, 
1821 ; and The Genuine Book of Nullification, by Hampden 
(Cruger), 1831. 



INDEX 



Abolition, agitation for be- 
gun, 229 ; petitions for in 
District of Columbia, 230; 
Vermont memorial for in- 
troduced, 232 ; efforts for in 
England, 267. 

Abolitionists, disuniouists 
among, 255 ; attend World's 
Convention, 266; sentiment 
toward in the South, 304. 

Adams, John Quincy, opinion 
of Calhoun, 40, 41, 42, 59; 
trouble with Calhouu, 48 ; 
candidate for the presidency, 
51, 52 ; denounces slavery, 
55 ; introduces subject of 
slavery in House, 185 ; pre- 
sents petition for dismem- 
berment of Union, 255. 

Alien and sedition laws dis- 
cussed, 82. 

Allegiance, defined by nullifi- 
cation convention, 192. 

Bank of the United States, 
charter for drawn by Cal- 
houn, 27 ; withdrawal of 
deposits from, 202 ; Calhouu 
assists Webster in bill to 
recharter, 203. 

Barnwell, Robert, opposes 
anti-union sentiment, 191. 

Barnwell, R. W.. opinion of 
Calhoun, 276. 

Bascom, Henry B., pamphlet 
of on Methodism and 
slavery, 292. 



Benton, Thomas H., debates 
power of removal, 213. 

Bernard, Simon, opinion of 
Calhoun, 45. 

Berrien, John M., Calhoun's 
pallbearer, 315. 

Bibb, opposes Force Bill, 180. 

Blair, James, in Congress, 184 ; 
favors Force Bill, 185. 

Bonneau, Floride, Calhoun's 
mother-in-law, 18. 

Boudiuot, Elias, on President's 
power of removal, 211. 

Buohauan, James, proposes 
plan for reception of Aboli- 
tion petitions, 232; ap- 
pointed Secretary of State, 
272. 

Burt, Armistead, attitude of 
toward Unionists, 191 ; Cal- 
houn's friendship for, 227. 

Caldwell, John, uncle of 

Calhoun, 12. 
Caldwell, Martha, marries 

Patrick Calhoun, 12. 
Calhoun, Andrew Pickens, 

born, 37. 
Calhouu, Anna Maria (Mrs. 

Thomas G. Clemson), 145. 
Calhoun, Floride Bonneau. 

See Colhoun, Floride Bon- 
neau. 
Calhoun, Floride, marriage of, 

18. 
Calhotin, James and Catharine, 

emigration of, 11. 



32G 



INDEX 



Calhoun, James Edward, Cal- 
houn's friendship for, 227. 

Calhoun, John E., at his fath- 
er's deathbed, 314. 

Calhoun, John C, birth of, 
11; early family history of, 
11, 12; early education of, 
12; attends Dr. Waddell's 
school, 13, 14; enters Yale, 
14; graduates, 15; attends 
law-school at Litchfield, 15; 
admitted to the bar, 16; 
marriage of, 18 ; elected to 
state legislature, 19; elected 
to House of Representatives, 
19; appearance of, 19; on 
Committee on "Ways and 
Means, 22; makes first 
speech in House, 23; op- 
poses embargo , 23, 24 ; na- 
tionalism of, 24; acts with 
the Federalists, 26, 27 ; ap- 
proves Treaty of Ghent, 28 ; 
defends the war, 26, 28; 
favors internal improve- 
ments, 29; financial policies 
of, 27, 28, 30; views of, on 
tariff, 29; early views of. on 
the Constitution, 30; relig- 
ion of, 38; personality of, 
39, 40, 41 ; becomes Secre- 
tary of War, 43 ; opposed to 
spoils system, 45 ; opinion 
of Monroe. 47; candidate 
for presidency, 49, 50; 
nominated for Vice-Presi- 
dent, 51 ; elected Vice- 
President, 52; views on 
Missouri question, 54, 55 ; 
views about slavery. 55; takes 
oath as Vice-President. 57 ; 
replies to Adams' attack on 
him as Vice-President, 58 ; 
relations with Adams, 59 ; 
favors Jackson as successor 



to Adams, 60 ; charged with 
corruption, 60; opposed to 
resolution against constitu- 
tionality of tariff, 61 ; as a 
nationalist, 62 ; opinion of 
the Supreme Court, 62; 
views on tariff change, 62; 
favors Jackson's election, 
68 ; attitude of, toward anti- 
tariff movement in South 
Carolina, 72; writes Expo- 
sition of 1828, 72; consid- 
ered a nationalist in South 
Carolina, 75; change of 
views, 95 ; theory of govern- 
ment explained, 96; re- 
elected Vice-President, 109; 
breaks with Jackson, 110; 
plot against, of Jackson men, 
112 ; replies to Jackson's 
charges, 113; isolation of, 
in 18'J8, 118; leads party in 
election of 1832, 149; does 
not wish convention of the 
states, 158; resigns vice- 
presidency, 159; elected to 
the Senate in 1832. 159; 
takes his seat in the Senate 
in 1833, 160; appearance of 
in 1833, 176 ; speaks in re- 
ply to Jackson's message, 
179 ; offers state rights reso- 
lutions, 179; speaks on 
tariff, 181; defends nullifi- 
cation in the Senate, 181 ; 
views on colonization so- 
ciety. 183 ; attends second 
meeting of convention, 189 ; 
approves of test oath, 195; 
prominence of, 197; isola- 
tion of, 199; assists in cen- 
suring Jackson, 202; atti- 
tude toward removal of de- 
posits, 202 ; makes overtures 
to Webster, 203; plan of, 



INDEX 



327 



for rechartering Bank of the 
United States, 204; defends 
Senate against Jackson, ~:05; 
shows limits of executive 
power, 206; supports gold 
bill, 206; dislike of, for 
Benton, 216 ; tries to repeal 
Force Bill, 206 ; explains 
division of powers, 207; 
moves committee to inquire 
into executive patronage, 
209 ; proposes distribution 
scheme, 209; thinks the 
President has not power of 
removal, 210 ; first debate 
with Benton, 213 ; opinion 
of Jackson, 216, 220; opin- 
ion of Van Buren, 217 ; 
on public land bill, 218; 
accuses MeLemore of specu- 
lation, 219; opinion of 
Jackson softens, 220 ; feel- 
ing of, toward Lord Mor- 
peth, 221 ; feeling of, toward 
Clay, 221; on party obliga- 
tions, 222; opinion of Web- 
ster, 223; feeling toward, 
in South Carolina, 225; 
fondness of. for Fort Hill, 
226 ; opposes reception of 
Abolition petitions, 231 ; 
introduces anti-Abolition 
resolutions, 233 ; resolution 
for annexation of Texas, 
234 ; opposes proposition to 
deny Abolition literature 
the use of the mails, 236 ; 
opposes charter for coloniza- 
tion society. 237 ; becomes 
friendly to Van Buren, 240 ; 
opposes revival of Bank of the. 
United States, 240 ; proposes 
independent treasury sys- 
tem, 240 ; cooperates with 
Van Buren, 242 ; favors Van 



Buren 's reelection, 243; 
proposes to cede public lands 
to the states, 246; speaks in 
defense of veto power, 247 ; 
stands for presidential nomi 
nation, 249 ; autobiography 
of, 250; defeated for presi- 
dential nomination, 253 ; 
objects to nominating con- 
ventions, 254; believes Abo- 
litionists favor discussion, 
255 ; attacks England for 
liberation of American 
slaves. 257 ; retires to pri- 
vate life, 257; becomes Sec- 
retary of State, 258 ; health 
of, 258 ; relations with Ty- 
ler, 259 ; announces that he 
favors annexation of Texas, 
260 ; favors treaty of Wash- 
ington, 262; writes pro- 
slavery note to Packenham, 
267; defends treaty of an- 
nexation, 268; instructs 
Everett to protest against 
British course in holding 
negroes accused of crime, 
269 ; takes up Oregon ques- 
tion, 270; refuses English 
mission, 272; attitude of, 
toward Polk, 272; retires to 
private life, 274; appear- 
ance of, 274; mental char- 
acteristics of, 275; asks loan 
of Abbott Lawrence, 276; 
returns to the Senate, 277 ; 
candidate to succeed Polk, 
278; believes Mexican War 
unnecessary, 279; states 
case of the United States in 
Oregon question, 283; pro- 
poses treaty to settle Oregon 
question, 284; makes speech 
on Oregon question, 286 ; 
opposes Mexican War, 288 ; 



328 



INDEX 



views of, on internal im- 
provements, 290; welcomes 
treaty of peace with Mexico, 
290; offers resolutions 
against Wilmot Proviso, 293; 
speaks on Oregon bill, 295; 
attends his last Congress, 
297; proposes Southern con- 
vention, 297 ; final illness 
of, 300 ; makes last speech, 
300 ; writes address to the 
South, 306; replies to Web- 
ster, March 7th, 309; last 
words in the Senate, H09 ; 
views as to dual executive, 
310; dies, 310; body of, re- 
ceived at Charleston, 316; 
funeral of, 317. 

Calhoun, John Ewing. See 
Colhoun, John Ewing. 

Calhoun, Martha Caldwell, 
mother of John C. Calhoun, 
12; death of, 17. 

Calhoun, Patrick, father of 
John C. Calhoun, 11; mar- 
riage of, 12. 

California bill introduced, 296. 

Cass, Lewis, Calhoun's pall- 
bearer, 315. 

Chapman, Reuben, asks Cal- 
houn's advice, 306. 

Charleston, population of, 122, 
124; wealth of, 124. 

Cheves, Langdon, on Commit- 
tee on Ways and Means, 2:2 ; 
one of "the war mess," 
35. 

Cheves, Mrs. Langdon, pre- 
sides over "the war mess," 
35. 

Clay, Henry, Speaker of the 
House, 22 ; boards at house 
with Calhoun, 35; declines 
to be Secretary of War, 43 ; 
abused by Randolph, 58; 



introduces tariff compro- 
mise, 180; defines Whig 
programme, 246 ; defeated 
for President, 266; last ap- 
pearance of, 298; offers com- 
promise, 299; Calhoun's 
pallbearer, 315. 

Clemson, Thomas G., Cal- 
houn's friendship for, 227. 

Clemson, Mrs. Thomas G. 
See Calhoun, Anna Maria. 

Coit, J. C, funeral sermon on 
Calhoun, 318. 

Colhoun, Floride Bonneau, 
friendship for Calhoun, 18; 
religious activity of, 38. 

Colhoun. John Ewing, cousin 
of Calhoun. 18. 

Colleton District, meeting in, 
67. 

Colonization society, legisla- 
ture of South Carolina pro- 
tests against, 80. 

Columbia, anti-tariff meeting 
at, 65, 67. 

Cooper, Thomas, attends anti- 
tariff meeting at Columbia, 
64; writes anti-tariff resolu- 
tions, 65; opposed to Cal- 
houn, 65; definition of al- 
legiance, 150. 

CralhS, Richard K., Calhoun's 
friendship for. '227; at Cal- 
houn's deathbed, 315. 

Crawford, William H., Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, 45; 
a candidate for the presi- 
dency, 48; supported by 
Congress, 50; letter of, con- 
cerning Seminole affair, 113. 

"Crisis, The," Robert J. 
TurnbulPs pamphlet, 78. 

Cunningham, Robert, Union- 
ist leader, 114; Calhoun's 
pupil, 145. 



INDEX 



329 



Dallas, Alexander H., 
Secretary of the Treasury, 
29. 

' ' Discourse on the Constitu- 
tion and Government of the 
United States," Calhouu's 
essay, 94. 

"Disquisition on Govern- 
ment," Calhoun's essay, 94. 

Distribution of surplus reve- 
nue, suspension of, 240; de- 
feated, 243. 

Distribution of revenue from 
public lands, Whigs pro- 
pose, 240. 

Disunion party in South Caro- 
lina, 119. 

Disunion sentiment, accelera- 
tion of, 198. 

Drayton, William, draws up 
remonstrance against tariff, 
61; a Unionist, 70; in Con- 
gress, 184; leaves South 
Carolina, 198. 

Dual executive, Calhoun's 
views on, 310. 

Duelling in South Carolina, 
127. 

Dwight, Timothy, President 
of Yale College, 15. 

Edgefield, anti-tariff meet- 
ing at, 68. 

Elmore, Franklin H., refuses 
English mission, 272. 

Erwin, James R., Unionist 
leader, 114. 

Exposition of 1828, presented 
to legislature, 71; opposi- 
tion to, in South Carolina, 
108; ordered printed, 10rt. 

Federalist Party, defeat 

of, 89. 
Federalists, opposition of, to 



the war, 31 ; from South 
Carolina in first Congress, 
117; from South Carolina 
in constitutional conven- 
tion, 116. 

Felder, John M., classmate 
of Calhoun, 15, 16; Union- 
ist leader, 114; in Congress, 
184. 

Floyd, John, voted for for 
President by South Caro- 
lina, 239. 

Foote, Henry S., protests 
against Calhoun s course, 
304. 

Force Bill introduced, 179 ; 
Carolina Unionists favor, 
185; passed, 185; ordinance 
nullifying, 192; efforts to 
repeal, 207. 

Forsyth, John, shows Craw- 
ford's letter to Jackson, 113. 

Fort Hill, home of Calhoun, 
57; description of, 225. 

Frost, Edward, United States 
attorney, 146. 

Gaillard, John, president 
pro tempore of the Senate, 
23. 

Gaillard, Theodore, competi- 
tor of William Johnson, 
115. 

Gallatin, Albert, Secretary of 
the Treasury, 26. 

Gerry, Elbridge, Vice-Presi- 
dent, death of, 23. 

Gilchrist, R. B., United States 
attorney, 146. 

Gould, James, Calhoun's pre- 
ceptor, 15. 

Gourdain, Henry, Calhoun's 
friendship for. 227. 

Green, Duff, Calhoun's friend- 
ship for, 227. 



330 



INDEX 



Grimk£, Thomas S., a Union 
ist, 70; introduces resolu- 
tions against the tariff, 71; 
dies, 196. 

Grundy, Felix, House leader, 
23. 

Hamilton, James, Jr., a 
partner of Petigru, 70; an- 
nounces nullification from 
the stump, 71 ; president of 
nullification convention, 
153; attitude toward Union- 
ists, 191 ; calls second meet- 
ing of convention, 189. 

Hammond, James H., friend- 
ship for Calhoun, 227; ex- 
presses dislike for Union, 
305; funeral oration on Cal- 
houn, 318. 

Harper, William, as a nation- 
alist, 61 ; leader in nullifi- 
cation convention, 153; 
writes ordinance of nullifi- 
cation, 154; attacks Union- 
ists, 191. 

Harrison, William Henry, 
death of, 245. 

Hartford Convention, relation 
of, to nullification, 90. 

Hayne, Robert Young, believes 
in liberal construction of 
Constitution, 61; leader in 
nullification convention, 
153; writes report for nulli- 
fication convention, 154; re- 
signs from Senate, 159; re- 
plies to nullification procla- 
mation, 170. 

Houston, Sam, promises to 
stand by Union, 304. 

Huger, Daniel E., Unionist, 
114; follows Calhoun. 196; 
reconciled to Calhoun. 229; 
resigns from Senate, 278. 



Hunt, Benjamin Faneuil, 
Unionist, 70. 

Hunt, Kaudell, offers resolu- 
tions at Union convention, 
172; leaves South Carolina, 
190. 

Hunt, Theodore Gaillard, 
Unionist, 70; leaves South 
Carolina, 196. 

Hunter, R. M. T., putative au- 
thor of Calhoun's "Life," 
250. 

Independent Treasury 
Bill, introduced by Cal- 
houn, 241; passed, 242; 
Whigs endeavor to repeal, 
246; repealed, 247. 

Ingham, Samuel D., puts Cal- 
houn in nomination for 
presidency, 48; selected as 
Secretary of the Treasury, 
109; Calhoun's friendship 
for, 228. 

Ingraham, George H., Cal- 
houn's friendship for, 227. 

Internal improvements, Cal- 
houn favors, 29; Memphis 
Convention, report on, pre- 
sented, 290. 

Jackson, Andrew, con- 
sidered for Secretary of 
War, 43; Calhoun opposes 
leniency to, 47; put in 
nomination by Tennessee, 
51; considers advisability of 
arresting Calhoun, 101; 
praises Calhoun, 110; rec- 
ommends distribution of 
surplus revenue among the 
states, 110; coolness of, to- 
ward Calhoun, 112; con- 
fers with Carolina Unionists, 
171 ; cooperates with Union- 



INDEX 



331 



ists, 178 ; thinks Calhoun 
demented, 184; attacks 
Calhoun on land bill, 220; 
writes in favor of Texas an- 
nexation, 265. 

Johnson, David, decides 
against test oath, 194. 

Johnson, William, Unionist 
leader, 114; dies, 196. 

Kentucky Resolutions of 
1798, relation of, toward 
nullification, 82. 

King, Calhoun's pallbearer, 
315. 

Lawrence, Abbott, willing 
to lend money to Calhoun, 
276; introduces Prescott and 
Sumner to Calhoun, 278. 

Lee, Henry, voted for for Vice- 
President by South Caro- 
lina, 239. 

Legar6, Hugh S., attends Dr. 
Waddell's school, 14; draws 
up remoustrauce against 
tariff, 61 ; a Unionist, 70 ; 
introduces resolutions 
against the tariff, 70; op- 
poses Exposition of 1828, 
108. 

Lewis, Dixon H., Calhoun's 
friendship for, 228; refuses 
to follow Calhoun against 
Mexican War, 289. 

Livingston, Edward, lays 
down remedy for unconsti- 
tutional laws, 86; writes 
nullification proclamation, 
162. 

Louisiana, Union sentiment 
in, 305. 

Lowndes, Thomas, Unionist, 
70. 

Lowndes, William, appointed 



on Committee of Manufac- 
tures, 22; one of "the war 
mess," 35; refuses office of 
Secretary of War, 43; nomi- 
nation of, for presidency, 
48, 49. 

MacDuffie, George, at- 
tends Dr. Waddell's school, 
14; opposes protection, 66; 
education of, 66; opposes 
nullification theory, 77; de- 
feuds liberal construction of 
Constitution, 77; argues in 
tariff case, 146; leader in 
nullification convention, 
153; writes address to the 
people of the co-states, 156; 
wishes nullification ordi- 
nance to go into effect, 170; 
opinion of ordinance nulli- 
fying Force Bill, 192. 
McLemore, speculations of, 

219. 
Madison, James, sends war 
message to Congress, 25; 
vetoes bill for internal im- 
provements, 30; opinion of 
Supreme Court, 85; on state 
conventions to consider con- 
stitutional questions, 153. 
Mangum, W. P., offers resolu- 
tion on right to paas tariff 
laws, 180; opposes Force 
Bill, 180; voted for for 
President by South Carolina, 
239; Calhoun's pallbearer, 
315. 
Mason, James M., reads Cal- 
houn's last speech, 300; de- 
livers Calhoun's body to 
South Carolina, 316; speech 
of, 317. 
Maxcy, Virgil, Calhoun'a 
friendship for, 227. 



332 



INDEX 



Mazyek, Alexander, Calhoun's 
friendship for, 146. 

Memminger, Charles G., plans 
defensive military organiza- 
tion for Unionists, 173. 

Memphis Convention, report 
of presented, 290. 

Mexican War, Calhoun op- 
poses, 288. 

Middleton, Henry, motion in 
nullification convention, 153. 

Miles, James W., funeral ser- 
mon on Calhoun, 317. 

Miller, Stephen D.. oath of as 
governor of South Carolina, 
109; explains events in Con- 
gress to convention, 19(J; 
attitude toward Unionists, 
191. 

Mississippi issues address to 
Southern states, 297. 

Missouri Compromise bill, 54, 
55, 56. 

Mitchell, Thomas E., in Con- 
gress, 184. 

Monroe, James, affection of, 
for Calhoun, 40; invites Cal- 
houn to be Secretary of 
War, 43; presidential candi- 
dates in cabinet of, 47, 48; 
questions bis cabinet about 
Compromise bill, 56. 

Monroe Doctrine, Calhoun ex- 
plains limitations of, 286, 
295. 

Morpeth, Lord, Calhoun's feel- 
ing toward, 221. 

National Bank Law vetoed, 
247. 

Nullification convention, hold- 
ing of determined on, 152; 
adopts ordinance, 155; ad- 
journs, 157; second meeting 
of, 190; dissolves, 193. 



Nullification doctrine, op- 
posed in South Carolina, 75; 
precedents for, 81; relation 
of toward Virginia and Ken- 
tucky Resolutions, 92 : rela- 
tion of toward Hartford Con- 
vention, 93; not accepted in 
the South, 111; Unionist 
convention defines, 151. 

Nullification of Force Bill, 
ordinance of, 192. 

Nullification, ordinance of, 
adopted, 154; signing of, 
155; sent to President, 161 ; 
laid before Congress, 178; 
operations postponed, 186; 
repealed, 190. 

Nullification proclamation, 
authorshipof , 162 ; substance 
of, 163; received at Colum- 
bia, 170. 

O'Neil, John Benton, de- 
cides against test oath, 194. 

Ordinance of nullification. See 
Nullification, ordinance of. 

Oregon bill passed, 296. 

Oregon quest ion, omit ted from 
treaty of Washington, 263; 
Calhoun takes up, 270; 
brought forward by Polk, 
280; Calhoun states claim 
of the United States, 282; 
British offer accepted, 285. 

Oregon territory, slavery in, 
29 1 ; Democrats claim the 
whole, 271; first American 
settlements in, 281. 

Oregon treaty signed, 287. 

Perry, Benjamin F., Union- 
ist leader, 114. 

Peters, B. M., funeral sermon 
on Calhoun, 318. 

Petigru, James Louis, attends 



INDEX 



333 



Dr. Waddell's school, 14 ; a 
Unionist, 70 ; description of, 
115; elected to lower house, 
145; argues in tariff case, 
146; draws up address of 
Union convention, 151; re- 
tires from political affairs, 
196. 

Pickens, Francis W., Cal- 
houn's friendship for, 227 ; 
refuses English missiou, 272. 

Pinckney, Charles, makes 
nationalist motion in con- 
stitutional convention, 116. 

Pinckney, Rev. Charles Cotes- 
worth, impressions of Cal- 
houn, 274. 

Pinckney, Henry L., elected 
Intendant of Charleston, 
115. 

Poinsett, Joel R., a Unionist, 
70; leader of the Unionists, 
115. 

Polk, James K., attitude of 
toward Oregon question, 
271 ; South Carolina votesfor, 
271; appoints Buchanan 
Secretary of State, 272; 
course toward Mexico, 279 ; 
announces claim to Oregon, 
280; makes claim to all 
Oregon, 283. 

Porter, Peter B., chairman 
Committee on Foreign Af- 
fairs, 22. 

Preston, William C, brings in 
Exposition of 1828, 71; op- 
poses Calhoun, 196. 

Prioleau, Judge, opinion of 
Calhoun, 228. 

Protectionists in South Caro- 
lina, 69. 

Ramsay, David, introduces 
anti-tariff resolutions, 80. 



Randolph, John, of Roanoke, 
abuse of Adams and Clay 
by, 58; opinion of Calhoun, 
184. 

Reeve, Tapping, Calhoun at- 
tends law-school of, 15. 

Rhett, R. Barnwell, anti- 
union sentiments of, 190; 
on Calhoun's autobiography, 
251; account of Calhoun's 
illness at capital, 312. 

Ripraps, contract for, 60. 

Rogers, Thomas J., puts Cal- 
houn forward for presidency, 
48. 

Rutledge, John, moves to make 
Constitution supreme law, 
117. 

Scott, "Winfield, commands 
troops about Charleston, 
171. 

Scoville, Joseph A., Secretary 
of Calhoun Central Com- 
mittee, 251. 

Sedgwick, Miss C. M., opinion 
of Calhoun, 40. 

Shelby, Isaac, offered post of 
Secretary of War, 43. 

Smilie, John, chairman of 
Committee on Foreign Af- 
fairs, 22. 

Smith, William, writes protest 
against constitutionality of 
the tariff, 61; leaves South 
Carolina, 196. 

South Carolina, power in the 
nation of, 23 ; conditions in 
1830, 121 et seq.; delegation 
in Congress, address of, 147; 
isolation of, 239 ; announces 
return to participation in 
national politics, 244. 

Spoils system, Calhoun at- 
tacks, 203. 



334 



INDEX 



Tariff Bill of 1827, de- 
feated by Calhoun, 64. 

Tariff bill of 1828, introduced, 
6b - . 

Tariff bill of 18152, effort to 
test constitutionality of, 
146; features of, 147. 

Tariff bill, passed in 1842, 254. 

Tariff of 1816, 29. 

Tariff of 1824, feeling toward 
in South Carolina, 60; South 
Carolina remonstrates 
against, 61; legislature de- 
clares it unconstitutional, 
61; meeting to protest 
against at Columbia, 64. 

Tariff compromise, Clay intro- 
duces, 180; opposition to 
in South Carolina, 185; 
passed, 186. 

Tariff, reduction of favored by 
Jackson, 60. 

Taylor, John, presides at anti- 
tariff meeting, 64; counsels 
moderation, 67. 

Tazewell, W. L., South Caro- 
lina votes for, for Vice-Presi- 
dent, 246. 

Test oath, form of prescribed, 
157, 192; tried in court of 
appeals, 194; adopted by 
legislation, 194; form 
changed, 195. 

Texas, annexation of, Cal- 
houn's resolution, 234; re- 
solved upon in 1836, 260; 
treaty sent to Senate, 265 ; 
Jackson favors, 265; treaty 
rejected, 265; accomplished 
by joint resolution, 271. 
Trenholm, George H., Cal- 
houn's friendship for, 227. 
Trescot, William Henry, de- 
scribes Southern feeling, 
150. 



Turnbull, Robert J., writes 
"The Crisis," 78; leader in 
nullification convention, 
15:5; writes address to the 
people of South Carolina, 
155; attacks Unionists, 191; 
proposes test oath, 192. 

Tyler, John, opposes Force 
Bill, 180; voted for for Vice- 
President by South Caro- 
lina, 239; succeeds to presi- 
dency, 245. 

Union and State Rights 
Party formed, 69. 

Union convention at Columbia, 
proceedings of, 172. 

Union convention of 1832, 
151. 

Union parly, dispersion of, 
196. 

Union sentiment, growth of, 
105. 

Union sentiment iu South 
Carolina, extent of, 114. 

Unionists, dinner of in 1828, 
118. 

Unionists in House of Repre- 
sentatives. 184. 

Unionists in Louisiana, 305. 

Unionists in nullification con- 
vention, 153. 

Upshur, Abel P., death of, 
258. 

Van Buren, Martin, Cal- 
houn's rival, 110; inaugural 
address of, 239; defeats Cal- 
houn for presidential nomi- 
nation, 253; defeated for 
nomination, 266. 

Van Derventer, Christopher, 
Calhoun's chief clerk, 45; 
Calhoun's friendship for, 
227. 



INDEX 



335 



Vermont resolutions for 
Abolition in the District 
of Columbia, introduced, 
232. 

Virginia, legislature adopts 
resolutions against nullifi- 
cation, 188. 

Virginia Resolutions of 1799, 
relation of toward nullifica- 
tion, 82. 

Virginia, sends commissioner 
to South Carolina, 188. 

Waddell, Moses, school of, 
12-14. 

Washington, treaty of, favored 
by Calhoun, 262. 

Webster, Daniel, replies to 
Calhoun, 183; bank bill of, 
204; thinks President has 
not power of removal, 212; 



last appearance of, 298 ; Cal- 
houn's pallbearer, 315. 

White, Hugh S., President 
pro tempore of Senate, 1G0. 

Willamette Valley, American 
settlement in, 281. 

Williams, David R., opposes 
extreme measures against 
tariff, 67. 

Williams, Thomas, leaves 
South Carolina, 196. 

Wilson, John Lyde, attacks 
Unionists, 191. 

Wirt, William, Attorney-Gen- 
eral, describes Calhoun, 40. 

Wise, Henry A., proposes 
Calhoun for Secretary of 
State, 2 r >9. 

Yucatan, Isthmus of, 
proposition to occupy, 294. 



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